


Et In Arcadia Ego

by Fallen_Morningstar



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: A Touch Of Dionysus, Adventure, All Your Base Are Belong To Great Witch Maddi, Alternate Universe, Angst, Crosswalk Sign Blinks ON For Threesomes, Crueler Intentions, Demon Sex Hits Different, Everyone Has Issues, F/F, F/M, Female Protagonist, Fluff, Helene Is The Real OG TBH, Humor, In Which Lilith Keeps Breaking Hearts, Later Smut, Let's Make Dia's Dream Come True!, M/M, MC development, MC has an issue or two, May Contain Moments of Mindfuckery, More Magic Than You Can Shake A Poor Sinner's Hand At, Other, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Problematic Things & People, Romance, Slow Burn, Solomon Got 99 Things But Only 72 Are Demons, Soul Magic Stuff, The Demon King Is Typing..., Twins' Connection Runs Hella Deep, Warning: Twins Are Very Physically Affectionate, Worldbuilding, body issues, crack tags keep muse happy sorry not sorry but also sorry haha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:33:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26855269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallen_Morningstar/pseuds/Fallen_Morningstar
Summary: Change murmurs through the Devildom under de facto ruler Prince Diavolo, but when things start to get loud after the arrival of an odd young human, the Council of Celestials decides that listening isn't nearly as fun as making some noise. (Everybody wants to rule the world, but only one master can rule them all.)Darker!/grayer!AU. More sin, magic powers, lorecreating, increased worldbuilding. Spookier vibes, but I like keeping a balance with OM-style crack, fluff and romance too! Fem!MC/Sins poly.FEBRUARY 25: RL illness and major family issues etc. delayed updates, please expect updates again now (and more replies to reviews)!
Relationships: Asmodeus (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Asmodeus/Main Character/Solomon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Asmodeus/Solomon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Beelzebub (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Beelzebub/Belphegor/Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Leviathan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Lucifer (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Lucifer/Main Character/Simeon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Lucifer/Mammon/Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!), Lucifer/Simeon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Character(s), Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Satan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Simeon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s), Solomon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 43
Kudos: 104





	1. there's no place like home

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: (update Dec. 07 '20)  
> Hey, and welcome to Arcadiaverse, or an Alternate Universe take based on Obey Me's game, story, and world! So you know what to expect, here’s what’s in store. 
> 
> More powers, more demons, more angels. OCs. Lore-inventing, world-building, slower burn in relationships. This world will be darker, though not overly so—rather it’s spinning more Vampire Pop Quiz energy into things, i.e a more demonic version of what we're given normally, where I also explore what the game may not with its more ‘PG-13’ or fade-to-black portrayals. 
> 
> Character portrayals: As does every fanfic author, I see characters in a certain way, but my core intent is to keep the characters largely true to their concepts. Plus I adore the humor OM gives us so much, and I want to keep some of that fluffy funny energy in! Anyway, character-wise, I'm hoping to portray everyone in a manner that draws from development in S1 and S2, and which goes into everyone's sins more... and yes, that includes Diavolo. Don't tell me that guy's a hundred percent pure UWU. I have huffed too much cinnamon from a cinnamon roll before; those things are not to be trifled with. (But seriously, you're not gonna like this if you feel anyone is totally sweet all the time. I love all of the game's characters endlessly, but I love their implied or shown darknesses too—rest assured, though, everyone will be cute and dumb, too.)
> 
> About the MC: I have created a female character for MC whose personality is loosely based on one or two traits of the game's protagonist and what's said about them (namely, curiosity and gutsiness). M.C is, however, a bit more proactive and crafty—and I hope a character that’ll be fun to follow through development! (M.C does stand for something. She does have a surname. Catch the references to different things—I love symbolism and meanings a lot.)
> 
> About the OCs: Different referenced characters, nameless and named (f.ex Mephistopheles, Maddi, Grisella) have been given personalities and will appear in the story. This includes female demons, because I believe we deserve some proper ones. 
> 
> Romance: slow burn. Also, an inexperienced MC. This fanfic is 'reverse harem' that turns into a poly relationship, i.e M.C has a romance with all seven sins. It will explore what could happen if such a relationship were pursued with all the bros (so please don't stick around to bash if you're not into that idea or not open to certain romances!). As a huge fan of all the brothers, I figured it'd be interesting to play with species relationship ideals and moralities and the 'what if OM actual poly route?'. 
> 
> Real World Products, etc: Real-world brands, games, and other things will have fake names in keeping with the game's. I'll start providing small A/Ns at the ends of chapters for those curious as to what I reference at times.
> 
> POV: Point of view will be MC's mostly, but other characters will get 'interludes' to keep things weird. :)
> 
>  **Important note, in the interest of transparency:** please be aware that I may take certain relations like the game's 'attic sandwich' and briefly describe brotherly affection that isn't sex but which might be interpreted as romantic (mainly Beel/Belphie kisses on lips and being 'unusually' comfortable with each other physically). This primarily, most explicitly applies to the Attic Sandwich (if you're not sure why, I ask that you please re-read Belphie's main storyline offering of a 'comfortable trio', and other such things. I view Beel and Belphie as parts of the same soul, in a sense. Furthermore, they have been shown to be very comfortable with and supportive of each other in the game to the point of Belphie commenting on Beel's studly physique etc.). 
> 
> Anyway, as a creator, I believe in freedom of expression, and I know you have your preferences and beliefs; I don't want to rudely surprise readers with Attic Sandwiches after many chapters, as I respect everyone's right to moral opinions and mental comfort. I'm not here to convert anyone, so please, click out if you will be bothered by even something light. (I will give a warning in advance in chapters with this, however.) 
> 
> DISCLAIMERS: I don't own Obey Me, or its characters etc., nor do I own the Obey Me stickers/emojis that may pop up periodically in chat texts. Also, I will stubbornly refuse responsibility for any 'what the hell is this' pop-eyed jaw-dropping moments you might have while reading this, or any demonic tail kinks you might discover, or, y'know, any feelings of being creeped out by creepy Demonland creepiness (I am told it happens). 
> 
> If you read all that, thank you so much--you're a patient gem of a person who's now likely prepared for much of what I have in mind. Thank you! ♡

* * *

_There's a dying in this life _

_ Like a constant hum of a song that just won't go _

_ And it threatens to make me go mad _

_ All I can do is think of something else _

_ But it's never the same _

_ Never as fascinating _

_ As that one humming tolling tinkerbell. _

_ Never. Never. Land. _

_ \- 'Et In Arcadia Ego', by Summer Benefield _

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK ONE**

Pen still poised over paper, M.C paused, straightening up from her hunched position over the desk and letting out a long sigh as she raked through the letter's contents yet again. For some reason, the thought of signing her name had her in a mild...tizzy. Stupid as this joke of a ‘Royal Academy’ was, the quality of production in this prank was really something else, and despite knowing nothing would come of this offer of magic schooling, she still felt like a little mermaid about to sign away her voice to some old sea witch. Perhaps it had been the professional way the letter had been written, or perhaps it was the old-age parchment, but there was a weird sense of expectancy in the air right now, like someone really _was_ awaiting her signature with bated breath—

Brows knitting, the young woman scoffed, shook her head, and looked back at the signature line. No, no, the prickling feeling was just her nerves. Maybe she’d been watching too many _isekai_ anime lately and the whole idea of being transported to different realms was just getting to her… maybe she was just sick of hibernating indoors and her wishful heart was playing her for a fool.

(Though at least delusions would cut through the numbness that was life nowadays—better feeling _something_ other than nothing, she supposed.)

Sighing, M.C ran a hair through her messy locks and signed off on the parchment with a flourish before tossing the pen and holding up the letter. ' _Diavolo'_ , huh? What an utterly original name. _Devil_ writing from a school for demons, how incredibly _inspired_ —and why waste ink on a postscript about ‘stepping away from the letter after signing’—?

_Crackle_.

Pale eyes flicked, then widened. The right corner of the parchment was blackening and curling under a flame. Panicking, she dropped the letter and shot up from her crowded desk, knocking over her chair in her haste to get away get away get _away_ —

But what she saw in the next few seconds frightened her more than the flames, or the belated realisation that she could’ve lit the desk on fire: her letter—or rather its ashes—had disappeared instantly.

Throat dropping into the pit of her stomach, M.C backed away, staring at the desk before glancing around and snatching the jeweled rosary from her nightstand and forcing it down over her head, fear edging down her spine in cold shivers.

She was more than a decade behind on prayers, but maybe a few wouldn’t hurt tonight…

****

Ultimately she found no relief in her clumsy manipulation of the pretty rosary. Yet perhaps it was just sloth hampering the whole ritual: she couldn’t remember the last time she’d done this, let alone done it properly, and despite her very real fear, she just couldn’t bring herself to open up her laptop to learn.

(Definitely wasn't going near the thing either, _definitely_ wanted to stay offline right now. Who would’ve thought that a recent foray into demonology would’ve lead to some creepy combustible in the mail?)

  
Perhaps sleep would be better than prayer, though, she thought, hand tightening around the sheets she laid on. _God_ , this was probably the most interesting thing that had happened in a while, but for some reason she wanted to sleep away the new memory so _badly.._. 

Sighing, M.C turned onto her back, releasing the sheets to fiddle with the flower brooch she wore tied around her neck. Staring past the fairy lights strung over her bed, she tried to count the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d slapped on the ceiling weeks ago.  One star, two stars, three stars, six stars, fifteen…. fifteen, fifteen. _Fifteen was her apartment number. Could she have been doxxed? After all these years of trolling around online, maybe she’d finally slipped up about Mom’s job? Sure, it wasn’t like the woman was an A-lister, but if her infamous cattiness towards celebrities didn’t precede her, then the memes of her most recent boozed up faceplant definitely would—_

Fifteen stars, fine. Whatever the letter meant, it wasn’t good. But she’d have to sleep on it, because it was already nine and she’d been staying up way too late replaying Four Houses' Blue Wolves route, and because she _really_ didn’t want to think about contacting her family about this...

Finally, though, she began to drift off. Sleep was light for a while, disjointed thoughts sinking her mind far below her limbs and past the mattress to realms unseen. Eventually, the melatonin she'd taken earlier ushered in a hazy sleep, which at some point gave way to a familiar dream.

_ Unbound in the flickering dreamscape, M.C floated amidst the wheeling stars and pulsating, ever-shifting scenery, staring at the lightless moon and the being seated upon its crescent. Many nights ago, the dream’s colorful galaxy had entranced her more than anything else, but over time, she had grown more lucid in this dream, and now the candy-coloured cosmos no longer held her interest the way the monochrome man’s whispers did. _

_ And so she waited, watching his pale lips until they at last moved. _

You are my only hope, _the man submerged in shadows whispered, wide eyes fixing on her._ Get me out of here. _From the shadows he stretched out a colorless hand._

_His dialogue was unchanged, she realized. Yet this dream-person was actually interacting with her now, so that counted for something. And his image wasn’t so wispy tonight; rather, it had all the brightness of her most textured dreams, seeming as real as anything she had ever encountered in waking life._

_ When M.C began to reach out, the beautiful man began to smile, and a spark of something lit his lorn eyes, whose sunset hue was all the more arresting for being the only bit of color in his image. _

_ But something made her recoil from him. There had never been anything frightening in this dream before, yet she had just made the perturbing discovery that her dreamself seemed to lose lucidity the longer she gazed intothose hypnotic, somewhat hollow eyes— _

I don’t even know who you are, _she said, jerking away._ So why should I save you?

_ Red flashed through the cold violet eyes as the man’s smile tightened, and his hand’s long pale fingers twitched outwards— _

**_ BANG. _ **

  
The dream's universe imploded then, colours dashing each other into blackness as fear made M.C pull into consciousness.

She woke with a rude start, moaning sleepily as she wondered when she’d lost her blanket and started sleeping on the kitchen marble. And—had she left Getflix on? Those voices sounded straight out of a movie, strange accents and all….

“She didn’t even land in the armchair. Losing your touch, _Luci_?“  
  
“Silence, Satan. Asmodeus, go help her up.”

Light footsteps, and then a breathy voice sounded from above:

  
“Hey there, sleeping beauty.”

White lashes fluttered open, silvery orbs slowly focusing on the 'Asmodeus' proffering his hand. Strawberry blonde hair beautifully coiffed and porcelain skin remarkably clear, the uniformed stranger would’ve looked like an angel of beauty even if he hadn’t had such unique eyes…

“Oooh, you’re a rare breed, aren’t you?” cooed the man. “It seems they took looks into consideration with exchange students after all.”

Flushing at his slick flattery, she took his hand and pulled herself upwards, then glanced back for a moment at his eyes. Their irises were indeed as strange as she had thought them to be, a hypnotic shade drifting between champagne and peach. She’d worn different colored contacts for ages, but she’d never before seen unearthly ones that looked so _natural_ , nor a man who looked this lovely in them.

“Say, can you look at me for a second longer?” Asmodeus whispered, smiling conspiratorially.

She breathlessly, stupidly obliged.

Whatever Asmodeus was hoping for didn’t seem to happen, though, because not a second later he was pouting about his ‘charms not working on her’. And thank heavens that he _was_ , because the sulking knocked sense back into her head, ringing alarm bells belatedly in her system; yanking her hands out of the man's, M.C sprang backwards, heart hammering in loud unison with her head.

(What had happened while she’d slept? Had she—no, _why_ had she been kidnapped? What was with the Harrison Porter vibes and the courtroom setup and all the male supermodels—?)

“Oh, dear, Asmodeus, now you’ve gone and scared her,” came a mild reproach.

The man in the judge’s seat had spoken. Deep-skinned and towering with piercing golden eyes and a unique red military uniform, this kidnapper looked to be the ringmaster of whatever freakshow was being orchestrated here.

“Ah, sorry, Lord Diavolo,” simpered Asmodeus, then turned an overly bright smile her way. “Well, there’s nothing to be worried about! Ooh, and here, you dropped this after being summoned.” He waved a very familiar plush at her.   
  
Not wanting to anger men whose kidnapping hadn't even woken her, the young woman graciously accepted her stuffed poodle, holding it close as her gaze skittered throughout the expansive room. The whole place was unreal, like a set for a movie.

“Why am I….” she began before hesitating, feeling her tongue tie up.

The angel named after the demon of Lust smiled, looking more amused than insulted by the way she backed up a few paces. “Sorry, darling, I know my beauty is disarming—it’s not every night that you wake up to a view like this, mmm?”  


“….” She stared at him, then at the rest of them. Her brain was begging her to get away from these people, but her body, trapped in a basket of nerves, wouldn’t let her leave.  
  
Fortunately for her, a deep, silky voice interrupted Asmodeus’ next line. “Enough playing around, Asmodeus. Get back here.” 

“Yes, Lucifer~” said the man in a sing-song voice, flashing the young woman a smirk before traipsing back to his seat beneath the pluming banner of a scorpion.

The man named Lucifer sighed, drawing her eyes towards him. As she fully took him in, her mouth dried out a little. Wine-dark eyes, chiseled profile, grand carriage, and that _voice_ — _God, if there was ever a man worthy of styling himself after the infamous fallen angel—_!

Unable to look at him for too long, silvery eyes shifted back to the other men. They were all far too well-spoken and dressed to be just a group of foreign cosplayers with military and demon fetishes… corporates moonlighting as cultists, maybe? 

(Well, if this was all the set-up for a virgin-sacrifice, then she had to say that the pseudonyms lined up pretty nicely, and at least she’d go out in style.)

The Lucifer man looked over at her and raised an eyebrow. “Are you perhaps a little tired?”

Uh. “Yes, since it’s late…” Judging by the stars outside the windows. “Excuse me, sir, but what time is it exactly?” she asked, trying to be polite and conversational, because well-dressed murderers with demon aliases probably had egos the size of watermelons shoved up their asses.  
  
“A bit past the 3:33 AM you were supposed to be awake at.”

Three thirty three, the devil's hour and the—the letter of offer? What the—so _this_ was connected to that? How had they gotten past security? No, wait, was security in on this scheme? Oh lord, would Mom even pay the ransom for her failure of an eldest child?

“Ah,” she said meekly, trying not to let her panicked thoughts show on her face. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m usually asleep by twelve. I didn’t mean to disrespect your institution.”

Lucifer tilted his head and cocked an elegant brow at her.

“You do catch on quickly.”  
  
She caught the mild note of approval in his voice and instantly treasured it, then mentally bonked herself for succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome in less than five minutes.

Thank heavens for interruptions, though, as one soon reared its head.

“Lucifer, I’m hungry,” whined the ginger-haired hulk of a man.

Lucifer snapped his fingers and pulled a tasty-looking granola bar out of thin air. M.C stared, unable to comprehend how he’d produced something of that size without even distracting her from his sleight of hand. _How…?_

“Beelzebub.” A sharp flick of the wrist and the granola bar landed on the table in front of the redhead with a thud. “Now behave yourself if you want dessert tonight.”

Evidently the bar was a health food or something even worse, because Beelzebub looked like he would’ve rather continued gnawing on the table than subject his stomach to such a horror; nevertheless, he shoved it in his mouth and began to chomp, wrapper and all.

Lucifer looked back at her.

“If you would kindly take a seat in that armchair over there, Lord Diavolo and I can begin answering the other questions you surely have.”

Doing his bidding, she sank back in the plush plum and prayed that this would all end with induction over execution.

“Ever to the point, Lucifer,” said the lord, who smiled brilliantly at his friend. “Well then, Miss M.C—that is your preferred address, is it not? My name is Diavolo. I am the ruler of all demons, and all here know of me. And someday, I will be crowned king of the Devildom.” He gave her a friendly smile. “We are currently in the assembly hall of the Royal Academy of Diavolo, which is, as you know from our letter, where the student council meets and conducts its business. I’m the president of said council.”

Why was a future king also attending school, she wondered? It was all very odd. Ah, well, she supposed she’d find out soon enough.

“M.C, this is Lucifer, an archdemon who is the Avatar of Pride and, no less importantly, one of my most trusted friends.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Diavolo,” retorted Lucifer, but didn’t look displeased by the statement. “Speaking on behalf of the entire student body at this great and storied school of ours… I offer you a most heartfelt welcome, M.C.” A slight smile. “As mentioned in the letter, you will be a student at RAD here for one year. We will provide you with uniforms, housing, academic materials, and a monthly stipend. When your exchange period comes to an end, you are to submit a paper about your stay here in the Devildom. Far from a thesis, this will be a relatively simple thing where you may be as honest as you like, so there is no need to worry about it. However, you _will_ need to submit it in order to return home.

Any questions thus far?”  
  
It was easier to just go along with the mass delusion, so as an experienced role-player without a death wish, M.C went happily along with it.

“How many other exchange students are there?”

“From the human world, just the one. From the Celestial Realm, there are two angels whom you will also meet shortly. From this you might infer that we sent two of our own to your world and to the Celestial Realm, in which case you would be correct.”

Diavolo leaned forward as Lucifer spoke, seeming eager to add on. “It’s as Lucifer said. There aren’t many exchange students for now as this is a fledgling program—the very first of its kind. You see, M.C, I have long dreamed of a world where humans, angels, and demons can be together as friends. Ideally, this exchange will act as the foundation for that world. And you are one of the two humans who can help me make my dream into a reality.”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, uneasy about the placement of such lofty expectations.

“Don’t worry,” said Diavolo kindly, as if reading her mind. “All you need to do is be yourself and enjoy your time here. Though,” he chuckled,” I do believe Lucifer would find it remiss of me if I didn’t also mention studying your hardest. So, any other questions, M.C?”

She nodded. “Yes, actually…” She thought of asking about what these people were going to tell her family about her disappearance, but thought it might be too risky at this point, and so instead tried to recall the contents of the letter. “In your offer, you assured me that my safety in the Devildom would be top priority… what exactly do you mean by that?”

The weight of all the stares suddenly grew threefold, and she suddenly found breathing a little more difficult as the aura of the room changed. Asmodeus’ cunning smile slipped as he curiously looked over for Lucifer’s reaction; Beelzebub charmingly spat out a piece of predigested plastic, then stared questioningly at Lucifer as well; and the golden-haired demon (Satan?) steepled his fingers, looking at M.C more intently now. Diavolo and Lucifer, meanwhile, kept their gazes squarely on her, the former’s smile fading a little, and the latter’s flattening into a neutral line.

“Quite frankly, M.C, there is a vocal minority of demons who are rather like those from tales in the human realm. It is they who have contentions about humans being allowed into the Devildom,” answered Diavolo slowly, looking at her unblinkingly.

Lucifer didn’t miss a beat. “It’s as Lord Diavolo says. Rest assured, however, that you will be protected while you are here. I shall personally see to that.”

“And when Lucifer says he will see to something, he always comes through,” reassured Diavolo, regaining some of his pep as he smiled over at his friend. “Prior to this, for instance, he even appointed one of his own brothers as your personal guardian.”

The golden-haired man coughed. “Speaking of which, Mammon should’ve been here by now, shouldn’t he?” 

Lucifer’s lips thinned at the remark. “Ah, yes, speak of the missing devil…” 

  
“I can open up my D.D.D and call him over,” offered the questioner sweetly, a distinct note of malicious amusement in his voice.

“Do.”

The blond pulled out a green-cased smartphone and swiped a few times, then waited as ‘Mammon’ took his sweet time in picking up; in the meanwhile, M.C found herself being called up to the table and given a ‘D.D.D’ of her very own.

  
“You’ll find everyone’s contact information in here already,” Lucifer told her. “It should be fairly easy to use if you’ve used human smartphones, but just in case, you do have a digital assistant to guide you through it. His name is Karasu.”

<Thanks for the intro, Lucifer sir! And I am very pleased to meet you, M.C!>, said the simply drawn, animated little crow wiggling on her D.D.D's screen. <I’ll be around to help you with whatever you need!>  
  
Her eyes widened at the cute A.I, but before she could respond, a loud presence burst into the room.

  
“Oi, Satan! What’s the big idea, callin’ me over like this?! This better be good, I was makin' a killin' resellin’ this fancy old china I found upstairs and— “

“Lucifer was the one who needed you, actually. The exchange student you’re going to be babysitting is here,” said Satan smoothly, looking every inch his name now. “Isn’t that right, dearest older brother mine?”

Asmodeus let out a loud titter as Lucifer’s expression soured and Mammon audibly gulped.

“Come here, Mammon, and greet your ward,” said the Avatar of Pride, eyes glinting with rising irritation. “M.C… this is your guardian demon: Mammon, the Avatar of Greed.”

Mammon was next to her before she knew what was happening.

“L-Lucifer, big bro,” the demon said nervously, then glanced over at her and blinked. “Hey, I thought you said the ward was a human, so why am I lookin’ after an angel, huh? ”

  
Was that a compliment or an insult? Also _wow_ , she had to give credit to their maker, because Mammon was _also_ gorgeous.

“Despite her appearance, M.C is a human,” said Lucifer, eying Mammon. “Now, my _darling_ idiot brother, I am _not_ going to ask what you were up to when you should’ve been here, because we're later going to chat all about your _newfound passion for tea_ , aren’t we?” His smile held a definite sadistic glint.  
  
“Y-yeah, definitely,” Mammon winced.

“Good. Right now you’re going to escort M.C back to the human world and help her gather her personal belongings. No dawdling afterwards; you’re to come straight back to the House.” Lucifer turned towards the young woman. “Finally, I think I ought to quickly introduce you to my brothers. Satan, the Avatar of Wrath—" A flick of the chin. "Asmodeus, the Avatar of Lust—" A gesture. "And Beelzebub, the Avatar of Gluttony. My other brother, Leviathan, governs Envy, but he's currently indisposed. You'll meet him later on."

She nodded.

Lucifer eyed her, then echoed the gesture approvingly. 

Diavolo positively beamed.

*****

  
“Can’t believe ya didn’t take the letter seriously! Ya gotta be the densest human I’ve met in the last few centuries,” the white-haired demon snorted as they landed in a puff of smoke. His tight grip on her shoulder released as the cloud began to slowly dissipate.

Still choking on the smell, M.C blinked away tears and stared at Mammon, who was looking through the foyer as if he were a judgy prospective tenant and not an unwanted guest. For a moment, he stared at the clutter of sneakers by the door, then at the wrapped paintings propped up alongside the bare walls.

”Just moved in?”

She blinked, shifting her gaze and hoping he didn’t notice the dust sitting about the place. “Um, yeah. Moved here not… not long ago.” That was a stretch, frankly: she’d been here in New York a few months now, but the low energy that had consumed her headspace had prevented her from unpacking. She just couldn’t seem to bring herself to care to do anything with the apartment outside of her personal space—not even Dad's paintings.

Not that it was a huge problem for her, though. Not unpacking most of the decor and eschewing the help of maids or feng shui consultants certainly deterred Mom and Angelica from visiting—their high standards wouldn’t dare stoop so low as to hang around a place unmanned by a team of personal attendants. Not fit for an impromptu visit from a camera crew, not an option.

Mammon eyed her skeptically, making her clutch her plushie and D.D.D more tightly before turning on her heel.

“My room is this way."

Not wanting him to keep _staring_ like that, she hastily lead him through the large, desperately messy luxury apartment, carefully picking through the gallimaufry of wrapped furniture, sealed boxes, and open cartons that had been half heartedly emptied out for sorting. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the company of a person outside her family (much less a boy—er, man) for anything other than grocery shopping or gym runs, and the presence of a mouthy, handsome cryptid was throwing her terribly off.

“My room,” she said unceremoniously, throwing open the door to her abode.

Mammon pushed past her into the room, turned his head, and sized up the place.

“Well,“ she began, but was interrupted by a whistle.

“So _this_ is where ya keep the good stuff!” The demon sauntered forth. “Gotta love Guccii,” Mammon said sunnily, a grin stretching his sculpted lips as he seized upon the walk-in closet. "Ya shoulda told me you were a trust-fund baby!"

The young woman bristled, but let him think what he liked as he prowled past her girlish effects and swooped into her designer-stuffed closet. 

“You have extraordinarily good vision,” she muttered tartly, figuring that demons having better eye-sight made perfect sense.

“Thanks human,” said Mammon blithely, corralling a limited-edition tote into his arms before stepping back out into the rainbow-coloured room. “Actually, y'know what, I _almost_ forgot to tell ya—the Great Mammon requires a tribute in exchange for babysitting a spoiled brat like you.”  
  
“…” She cocked her head, fairly sure that Diavolo and Lucifer would’ve mentioned this earlier but consternated all the same by the thought. “Not my blood, right?” 

(Flesh was probably off the table due to the whole idealistic ruler thing, but maybe plasma smoothies were in vogue—?)  
  
Mammon threw her a withering look as he combed a speculative hand through a jewellery box. “Fuck you think I am, a _vampire_? Archdemons like _me_ don’t need that kinda crap—“ golden bracelets went up Mammon's wrist and she winced, but didn’t protest the pilfering. “I have _taste_. Sophisticated, _Demon Lord_ tastes.” (Presently the Avatar of Greed was approvingly eying a gaudy heart-shaped ring Mom had gotten her as a Valentine’s Day pity present.)

Total magpie. Kind of funny, but they had an objective here. “Hey, I’ll just pack quickly, then,” she said, figuring it was best to leave him to his devices (and thanking all her stars that the sentimental stuff wasn’t on display).

  
“Yeah, yeah, you do that, human. I’m feelin’ generous so I’ll give ya...half an hour. Nah? Alright, maybe add ten minutes ta that...”

Her gaze, which had been seeking out her suitcase, whipped away from the boxes of blonde hair dye she was considering back to Mammon, who was busy prying open her music box. Human, huh?  She'd been given a few proofs of demons and magic already, and yet this was still all so dreamy and strange...she really was still half-wondering whether this wasn’t just some particularly lucid dream.

For a human, dreams would, after all, make the most sense.


	2. heels click, & here we go

* * *

**A/N:** M.C's father being a painter is based on ObeyMax's original world concepts for the MC's mother, but I decided to go a different direction—and add a little twist or two... :)

* * *

_“We have never heard the devil's side of the story, God wrote all the book.”_

_― Anatole France_

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK ONE**

The House of Lamentation was its name exactly, its exterior everything gothic and terrible in the architectural world. Shadows seemed to loom unusually large in the courtyard that she and Mammon walked through, and the caws coming from crows seated throughout the yard seemed all the more ominous for the wretched things’ eerily glowing golden eyes. Objectively, the place had a marvellous aesthetic if you were looking for a setting for a high-budget horror movie, but M.C wasn’t necessarily one for the dark and dreary, so she edged closer to Mammon, trying to keep as close to him as common courtesy and self-preservation would allow.

“Just so ya know,” Mammon said as they entered the hallway, ignoring the stairs and passing by an elaborate dollhouse, “you’re _real_ lucky to have The Great Mammon showing you around like this. Normally I’d be chargin’ a soul and a half for premium escort services, but Lucifer begged me so much to do this, I just had to oblige him, y’know?“ 

The white-haired demon sniffed haughtily, and she eyed him with some interest. Mammon really liked to oversell himself, didn’t he? Still, Lucifer, who seemed considerably serious, had entrusted her to him, so perhaps he wasn't all talk…? 

She considered the demon as they walked, but not for too long, as Mammon was quick to break their silence when he stopped before a random door. “Okay, here’s your room. Other side of the kitchen, lucky for you. You’ll probably be hearin’ Beel knock around most of the time.” 

So said, Mammon threw open her door, allowing her to look inside.

Expectations completely thwarted then, M.C stared at what was to be hers in awe. The chamber's decor greatly appealed to her imagination, fantastical thing that it was: a living tree of some unknown leafy variety grew out from the floorboards, as natural an installation as any of the elegant old furniture placed throughout the room, colourful lanterns interspersed throughout its branches; and on the walls enclosing the bed beneath its boughs grew what was clearly real ivy. Many more things caught her swift eyes—the skull in the corner, the pseudo-oriental rug on the floor, one corner's strange old tomes—

She squinted. “Isn’t the candelabra over the bed an, um, fire-hazard?”  
  
“Huh? Candelwha—oh, it’s magical, human.”

“Ah,” she replied, staring at its flames in awe. “At any rate, it’s—this is incredible. Thank you, Mammon!” she blurted out, throwing a smile his way.

The whole thing was so unexpectedly _pretty_ that it seemed straight out of a whimsical animated production, and she _loved_ it.

The demon looked surprised and perhaps even a bit embarrassed by her reaction. “Didn’t decorate it, so no need for thanks.” Then he obviously reconsidered his words. “BUT. You can show your thanks for The Great Mammon’s assistance by not dying your first week here, got it, human?”

So said, the demon strode forward, snapped his fingers, and pulled her suitcase out of the same thin air he'd thrown her 'tributes' into before tossing it carelessly onto her bed, where it landed with a heavy _whump_.

“Sure thing. It’d cramp your style to drag around a human corpse for the rest of the year, right?”

He snorted, giving the girl a quick look as he tossed a key her way. “Let me give ya some advice. Lucifer’s going to make sure you have something you can protect yourself with since you’re not a sorcerer like that other guy, but ya shouldn’t rely just on that. Humans who don’t have magic are easy prey for demons, you know? Sure, a shiny soul protects ya from temptation and all that, but even if it does, it’s not going to stop a demon who just wants to _hurt_ you. Wouldn’t take a high-level demon to kill you, is what I’m sayin’…”

Dread spiked in her gut, but before it could fully root, an obnoxious stage-cough sounded from behind them, prompting both demon and human to whirl around.

“Speaking of dying, Mammon the Lame…” said the newcomer, arms crossing and glare unending.

“Gah! Levi!”

In the hallway stood a demon who was just as pretty as those she had met, but likely the most startling color-wise: lanky and violet-haired with long bangs that just tickled his eyelashes, 'Levi' had a scornful scowl made all the more effective by the unsettling orange color of his eyes.

“Mammon,” said his brother scornfully. “I’m going to keep this short so that _maybe_ your last two braincells can process it this time. Give. Me. Back. My. Grimm. _Now_.”

“Uh,” said the white-haired man, skirting around M.C towards the doorway. “Hey hey, look, Levi, I just need a little more time, alright? I’m clean out right now and my next modellin’ gig isn’t until next week—“  
  
“You’ve been telling me that for the last two hundred years—!“  
  
“Two hundred _sixty_ , get it right! Anyway, uh, human! Here’s my _favorite_ little brother. He’s the Avatar of Envy—Leviathan, but Levi for short.”  
  
“Spare me the introductions,” spat the purple-haired demon. “I’m not interested in you and your little normie pet.” 

Leviathan launched at Mammon so quickly that M.C was still pondering what kinds of hair colors were endemic to demons while the younger brother was taking a swipe at the white-haired thief. Mammon, however, wasn’t about to be caught out by the flash of purple-painted fingers, spinning away fast that his departure knocked his brother and the human right into each other.

“MAM—hey!”

“See ya two later!” Mammon yelled from somewhere down the hallway.

Huffing and puffing, a red-faced Levi sprang away from her, muttering a few choice words under his breath. When he’d at last gathered himself, he looked over at M.C and shook his head, the scowl from earlier reemerging on his lips.

“Wowww. _Wow_. My worthless scum of a brother really just used a low-HP human as a meat shield. Not surprised at all, though.”  
  
“Anything to get out of paying a debt?” M.C guessed grumpily, massaging her aching temple.

The archdemon nodded scornfully as he brushed himself off. “Exactly. So don’t get too attached, because he’d sell you down the Styx River for a couple of Grimm. That’s _my_ word of advice to you, human.”

M.C. left the fact that they actually had a mythical river here for later contemplations, instead looking over Levi for a second.  She relaxed into the blank, serious face that came so naturally to her and forced herself to stare up into his shockingly orange eyes. “Ah, so, do you have any more advice? You know, since I’m clueless and you seem to know quite a bit about how things work around here...”

She tried to keep her tone as respectful as she could make it without slipping into cloying honey—an easy enough task, since she was used to being obedient towards authority figures.

(And because that attack had been _fast_ , and now that things were sinking in, she was starting to become scared of these men—no, these _demons—_ and fear really did breed a sense respect, however twisted...)

Leviathan had started to avert his gaze, but the second her words registered, his eyes snapped back alertly, the expression on his face becoming rather more smug.

“Yeah, of course I know what's up--hey, wait a second! You’re human, aren’t you? So come on over to my room.”

*****

If her own room had impressed her, then Levi’s room outright floored her: having expected a more formal setup like her room, she was incredibly floored to see a room that adhered to modern aesthetics. Light seemed to come only from the computer monitors of a lavish gaming setup, candy-coloured jellyfish suspended in the middle of the room, and a glass ceiling, which made it seem as though the room were at the bottom of some lighted swimming pool. A huge fish tank wrapped around a wall, though she saw no fish swimming through it. 

What interested her besides the amazing aquatic room, though, was its telltale signs of a gamer otaku: anime girl figurines, manga titles, posters, consoles, and other kinds of merchandise were all arranged in little cubbies or atop just about any surface—the longer you looked, the more you’d find. Amazingly enough, all of this was all presented very neatly, suggesting that the owner took enough pride in his hobbies that he didn’t necessarily fit the gross shut-in stereotype.

(Outwardly, anyway. She was pretty sure that a demon lord who seemed to know what waifus were had to have some pretty rank tastes somewhere down the line.)

“Sorry, what was that?” M.C asked, not having heard what Leviathan blurted out after she stepped closer to a pink glass case.

He huffed. “I said, ‘watch the shrine’, human!”  
  
“You mean where all this Ruri merchandise is?”  
  
“Yeah—wait, wait!” Leviathan suddenly went breathless. “So I was right—you know Ruri since you’re human!” 

“Well, I mean, I’m a human who happens to like anime and manga, so of course…” _Of course I know that overrated bloat of pixels._ “I haven’t watched or read her series, though.”

  
Groaning, Leviathan gave a roll of the eyes. “Oh. So you’re basically one of _those_ anime fans? I get it, I guess. I mean, it’s okay. Only _true_ anime fans understand the nuanced greatness that goes by the humble title of Greatest—“

Five minutes later, after Leviathan wrapped up his monologue about Ruri-chan and her importance to anime and manga culture as a whole, M.C wanted to punch a hole in his gatekeeping otaku ass. Fortunately, she was saved by the fact that she could be pretty patient (and unfond of getting scalped by weird-eyed, cute-when-mute archdemons).

“Do you sleep in that?” she guessed, gesturing to the bathtub overflowing with blankets and pillows.

Leviathan’s condescending look shifted to a surprised one. “Yeah, actually. What,” he said, frowning quickly, “you think that’s weird or something?”  
  
She held up her palms in a peacekeeping gesture. “In a _cool_ way.”

He stared at her suspiciously. “Fine, I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself. Do you know TSL, at least?”  


Did he mean—?

  
“ _The Seven Lords?_ I do know about the series and its premise, but I haven’t started reading yet. It’s on my bucket list, though.”

  
Leviathan blinked those great big jack-o-lanterns of his. “On your bucket list?“ he looked downright perplexed. "But...it's so easy to just _start_. Why would you leave something so great for later in life when humans can die at literally _any_ moment?”  


(Alright, now this was too uncanny considering the content crammed into her suitcase…)

  
“Um…” (she also didn’t really like this valid point coming from a probably immortal demon.) “That’s true. Is there a library here where I can borrow volumes upward of the first seven, then?”

“Nah, Akuzon is where I—wait, upwards of the first seven? You need—”  
  
“I took the first seven with me,” she interrupted, “I got the set as a present from my father after he was gifted a few things from work.”

“Gifted...hey, this is a stretch, but is it possibly an Anniversary Edition?”

“Hn—yes, how’d you guess?”  
  
Leviathan got an uncanny look in his eyes then. “Human, bring them back here, STAT!”

Eesh, what a nerd. “Alright, give me a few minutes and I’ll be right back.”  
  
She was true to her word, walking as fast as she could to her room and back. Fortunately, she didn’t encounter any demons on either trip and was soon back at Leviathan’s side, the Special Limited Edition Anniversary Collection of the first TSL books in her grasp—still pristine, still perfect, still in its protective plastic. The attached letter from her father had long ago been removed and cherished, safe with the other few valuables she had taken with her.

“Here you go,” she said, reluctantly handing over the set.

Leviathan’s orange eyes popped. 

“WHOOOOA,” he held up the heavy set reverentially. “I can’t believe it… after all this time. This is really it! It’s in my hands at last! Do you know just how many of these were actually sold?! ”

…had she inadvertently just made some kind of offering to a demon?

“Even the special case is beautiful,” breathed Leviathan, eyes gleaming with something she thought might’ve been tears. “Henry looks so life-like here. And the lords’ emblems look amazing! Whoa….”

Despite her misgivings about the strange being, M.C softened at this new bout of enthusiasm from him. Doubtless Leviathan was a demon for a reason, but he seemed a lot sweeter when enjoying himself. More…palatable.

“Henrick Ewe is definitely an artistic genius,” sniffed Levi, looking very moved as he cradled the set with all the fondness of a new mother. “If anyone should—no, if anyone _deserves_ to do book covers for this series, it’s definitely Mr. Ewe. I mean, he’s even an OG fan of the series! You couldn’t ask for a better artist to capture the real spirit of the story!”

The tiniest smile crept onto her pink lips. “That’s kind of you to say. I’m sure that he would…”

Her stomach dipped, and regret suddenly panged throughout her, that familiar ache stirring up again.

Levi didn’t seem to notice that her smile had disappeared though; still completely in his bliss, he only patted the boxed books and said: “Eh, do you know him?”

“Ah, well, yes. He’s my dad.”

“Dad? Like, father IRL? Really?!” Leviathan looked absolutely thrilled. “Do you know if he’s going to do any more TSL art? Because Grimm converts really well—“  
  
“He’s dead.”  


Levi stopped dead mid-sentence, staring at her.

  
“Wait, when?“  
  
“Three years ago.”

  
“I…” Leviathan grew awkward. “I’m… sorry.”

“Unless you killed him, don’t be.”  
  
Silvery eyes flickered away, and she tried to fend off sadness with a change of subject.

  
“I’d rather not talk about that, but basically that’s why I want to get into TSL at some point. I never did while he was still alive and I regret that, so I’d like to give it a shot in his memory. It’s why I brought some of the volumes he got me down here to the Devildom. Besides… I really enjoy the fantasy genre.” She glanced at Leviathan unsurely. “So, um… I guess I’ll start reading soon.”

The archdemon seemed to relax again as they reentered territory familiar to him, but only minutely. “That’s a nice way to honour his memory,” he said, almost in a whisper. He was still holding onto the boxed set and seemed a bit distant, almost sad…

Not liking that look on him, she acted on impulse then. “Hey… how about a trade? You give me used copies of TSL, and I give you that set?”

Now that yanked Leviathan back to planet…wherever this Devildom was. “Wh-what?” His jaw dropped. “Seriously, human?! You’d just GIVE me this collector’s edition?!”

She nodded slowly.

“I mean, that’s crazy,” Leviathan babbled, but nonetheless cast greedy eyes over the boxed set, “its worth is really huge to any real TSL fan. Are you insane or stupid? Because, really, I don’t care which, but you need to appreciate how amazing this set is. I could give you the copies I give to anyone who wants to start TSL, of course, but that’d be an unfair exchange! Wow, me, a demon, talking about unfair deals. I mean, I guess I just feel sorry for your cluelessness because I’m not as scummy as Mammon, you know?”  
  
How did he speak in paragraphs without breathing?

“Copies of the books and whatever you see fit to give me would be fine, really,” M.C said pleasantly. “Like… some more advice about the Devildom, perhaps? About dealing with Mammon?”

Leviathan actually laughed a little at that. “I’ll give you dirt on that no-good jerk for free. Wait, I have an idea—I’m going to tell you about something way better than that!”

Orange eyes glinting, the archdemon set the box gingerly down atop his desk, and then gestured for her to join him over in a corner filled with beanbags that looked as though they were filled with moving jelly and seashells.

“So, about Mammon…”

*****

Demon pacts turned up limited results on the devilnet, for which Karasu quickly apologised.

<The human-oriented pages about pacts aren’t very descriptive>, lamented the cute pastel crow, hopping about her D.D.D’s screen. <Anything else is in Infernal, which humans can’t read. As a digital demon, I hate to say it, but the best source for these kinds of things is usually offline. If there’s a mage you’re friendly with, they’d be the best person to ask!>

“Hmm…” she stared at the screen, snuggling further into the cozy, pink-quilted bed and thinking.

Leviathan said it _might_ be a good idea for her to make a pact with Mammon so that she was well and truly protected, but if she was going to be realistic, Leviathan _knew_ it was a good idea for her to make a pact with Mammon so that Leviathan could get his money and his own back…. and who knew what else the Avatar of Envy could make her abuse a pact for?

Lack of info aside, a text from Lucifer asking her to drop by his study after dinner had revealed that she would have to be given an extra source of protection given that she didn’t have magic. A lack of magic could apparently be problematic in the event of making a pact, so what good would a pact with Mammon be for if she couldn’t even command him?

But really, did she even want to go so far as to make strange deals with demons? If something like a soul was up for grabs with pacts, did she really want to trade something so precious away—especially when it could potentially be easier to manipulate demons just by befriending them?

Yeah, she thought, staring at the corner of the D.D.D’s screen, where Karasu had gone to sleep on his tiny little perch. Friendship—or friendliness, anyway. For now, she’d try to survive this year the human way unless circumstances forced her hand.

(There was one thing she would do regardless, however: seek out the aid of the mysterious sorcerer named Solomon that Leviathan had name dropped earlier. Lucifer had basically told her she had no magic, but who in their right mind would trust a real live demon’s words just like that?)

*****

M.C hadn’t known what to expect from a private meeting with Lucifer, but never would she have foreseen him slipping a ring onto her finger. Despite knowing that romance was the furthest thing from his mind with this gesture, the touch of his gloved hands startled her into a blush and a fluttery feeling that felt suspiciously like the last, highly unfortunate time she’d started having a crush on someone. 

“The ring I just gave you is imbued with raw magic called active power, or AP for short. If danger presents itself and one of us isn’t with you, you can say the activation password, _Arcadia_ , to emit shockwaves that can paralyse nearby demons and buy you some time. It has three uses and is useful against many demons, so don’t activate it as a joke. It needs to be recharged weekly, so I would have you come by my office on Fridays at this hour. Understood?”

  
“Yes, sir.”

A smirk. “Your deference is…appreciated, but just Lucifer will do. There’s no need for titles or honorifics.” 

Clearly wasn’t encouraging her to get all chummy with him, though. “Yes, s—Lucifer.”

This close to him she could see that Lucifer's eyes were in fact not all black but also a deep, wine red, possessed of an eerie, wildly unearthly beauty the very opposite of Mammon’s celestial blue. Their depth was something else; if she had found it difficult to look at Lucifer originally, then at this distance, she certainly was struggling to maintain direct eye contact with him.

Thankfully, the demon’s attention had already begun to shift away from her. “Very good. You may leave now.” Suddenly, however, he looked back at her, canting his head slightly. “Or was there something else?”

“Ah…” she flailed mentally, trying to unscramble her brain. “Actually, yes. I’d like to thank you for my room.”  
  
“Indeed?”

“Yes.” She took in a breath, somewhat hoping that the Avatar of Pride wouldn’t find what was on her mind too foolish. “You see, once I was alone there, and able to rest, I felt more at peace than I have in a long time. Whoever decorated may not have thought of me as an occupant in particular, but they clearly have taste. Ah, and the tree is easily the best part—it smells lovely, too…”

Something strange flickered through those dark eyes of Lucifer's, and the demon stared at her for a long moment in which she was sure her soul was being probed before glancing back down at his papers. 

“I'm pleased that it's to your satisfaction.” 

A neutral reply. He didn’t laugh or sneer, but the way he picked up his swirled golden pen and flipped open a small black book indicated that she ought to leave. 

Murmuring thanks, she quietly did so.


	3. just another box of tricks

**A/N:** Thank you so much for the kind reviews and kudos! I greatly appreciate your support, always. <33 Here's the third chapter, hope you enjoy! I'll be adding a few more A/N about references and things like that eventually, as well as a link to a playlist (or hundreds) for the fic. (Also, spot the ObeyMax inspo, haha.)

Also, please do consider leaving a review if you enjoyed it! Comments are moderated mainly to filter out spam, etc. Hearing about what you enjoyed really fuels my desire to keep sharing the story. :) Feel free to be as brief or informal (keyboard smashes, etc.) as you like!

Sitri: the female demon introduced in this chapter is an OC made to represent "the succubus who won the beauty portion in the Queen Contest", whose beauty is rivalled by dear old Maddi's.

**EDIT (Dec. 7, 2020):**

As mentioned later in chapter five, please enjoy this visual reference of M.C in her uniform. I will always be endlessly grateful to my friend, Cactus, for taking my concept art of M.C and fleshing it out with such vibrancy and beauty. <333 Please do check out her [twitter](https://twitter.com/rujellyroll) (@rujellyroll) to check out more of her beautiful art and give her a follow!

* * *

_“What is hell? Hell is oneself._  
_Hell is alone, the other figures in it_  
_Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from_  
_And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”_

  
_― T.S. Eliot_

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK ONE**

“Hey, what’s takin’ so long?!” Mammon’s voice demanded from behind the door. “You already missed breakfast, y’know. And I don’ care about being late, but Lucifer said you gotta be on time for your first day.”

“Tsk, tsk, Mammon, is that any way to talk to a lady? I’m sure M.C’s busy putting her best face on. After all, she’s going to be walking side by side with the most beautiful person in the three Realms… oh, and you too, I suppose.”

M.C sighed to herself as the two demon brothers began bickering, dropping her gaze from the tall floor mirror. She didn’t want to disappoint someone as impressive as Lucifer, let alone a demon prince, but she was dragging her feet for a reason. Truth be told, she was nervous about her first day at RAD for reasons other than a sense of self-preservation; namely, personal insecurities. After dropping out of college four years ago, she hadn’t been anywhere besides home in a while, and she hadn’t worn anything besides loose tees, sweatpants, and hoodies for so long that the prospect of going out all dolled up in such a neat fit was daunting (curse fast, accurate magical tailoring). 

What was more, she hadn’t been in a peopled environment with her natural looks in _ages_. Having had no need to go out, she’d stopped dying her hair blonde, and having had no head on her last night, she’d neglected to pack colored contacts or her full makeup kit, which contained both her dark eyebrow pencils and black mascara; as such, she looked every bit the ghost that had spooked her childhood classmates—stark, wan, creepy. ' _Weirdo', 'mummy', 'ghost girl'_ —no, not even 'girl', just ' _ghost'_ …

She grimaced as Mammon started trying the doorknob, and shooed the negative thoughts away. There wasn’t any time for doubt, she told herself, tying off her hair in a sidetail. Sliding the flower brooch off its silver cord, and pinning it in the middle of the white uniform bow, she took in a deep breath and gathered her things. She had everything she needed, so she could do this. She was in the strangest of new places conceivable, but she had always been excellent at make-believe—she could always just pretend this wasn’t real, just another role-play.

Yeah, she’d do that. She’d pretend this was a novel or a manga— _anything_ but some strange coma of a new universe. _Pretend you were talking to 2D men, pretend you were talking to 2D men…_

“Hey, sorry that I took so long. I was just a little nervous about today, so I spent longer than usual trying to get ready.” She dared not look the handsome brothers directly in the eyes, but when they didn’t respond, she had to. 

She found Mammon looking at her oddly and Asmodeus rooting through his bag for something.

  
“Took you all that time just to come out lookin’ like that?” The white-haired demon queried gruffly, and she winced, a little hurt, before flicking her eyes towards Asmodeus, who had just stepped closer to her.  
  
“Hey, hold still for a second, M.C.,” the strawberry-blonde chirped. “I just want to polish your look a little…”  
  
She blinked as her chin was swiftly grasped and tilted upwards by the Avatar of Lust, who expertly swept a lipgloss wand over her lips. Once they were glossed to his taste and his warm fingers had left her skin, she reached reflexively for her lips—only to have her hand swatted down by the blonde’s manicured digits.

“Lips sealed!” Asmodeus scolded. “Apostazy's glosses last a while, but they need to set first.”  
  
He gave her a once-over, then frowned and closed in on her again. Mammon groaned as his brother then proceeded to undo the human’s hair, fluff out her locks, and retie the ponytail to his liking.

“You have pretty hair, but you really need to start doing it this way if you’re going for simple styles. Tighter isn’t _always_ better, you know!” Sighing and shaking his head at her nonplussed reaction, Asmodeus smirked over at Mammon. “Hmm, why the long face? Your little human is so cute, and look how nice those lips look now! Actually, I might just have to take her off your hands—“

  
Eye twitching, Mammon grabbed one of the human’s hands and one of his brother’s. “Alright, we’re goin’ now. I don’t hear any brains rattlin’ round in either of those skulls, so I guess I’m gonna have to show ya to school myself!”

The young woman's eyes widened in alarm. “Wh—wait, I can—“ she started, only to be resolutely ignored by the white-haired demon.  
  
“Ugh, so rough,” Asmodeus complained as the demon dragged both of them down the hallway. “Mammon, you brute! Hey, ease up, you’ll bruise my beautiful kissable skin! Or even snap my wrist—” 

“Yeah, yeah,” said his brother sarcastically, forcing his two captives past the stairs. “Worried about not bein' able to jerk it for a couple of hours, ain’t ya?” He did become a bit gentler in his handling, though.

  
Neither demon spoke to her as they all sped out the house, so she thanked all her stars that Mammon released them without being asked once they’d gone past the gates—her whole arm was aching by that time.

  
“Alright, we’re gonna be late unless we run. Human, you’re comin’ with me; Asmo, you’re on your own.”

“Fine by me,” snorted Asmodeus, who was worriedly pulling up the sleeves of his uniform, seemingly to check for bruising. “I’m not going to go to class all gross and sweaty. Some of us demons actually have—and _set_ —standards, you know.”

“Yeah, whatever. Human, can you run real fast or nah?”  


“Um, I’m in heels and I hate running.” Alas, for an anime, M.C never would’ve made the cut for wall-smashing Titan or opening-worthy harem girl. 

“Okay, so you’re weak. Fine, The Great Mammon will do ya a solid."

“What are you—EEEK!”  
  
“Shaddup, I told you I was gonna get us there on time!” Mammon scowled down at the embarrassed human now in his arms. “And hold down your damn skirt ‘cause I’m gonna run."  
  
She couldn’t bite back an annoyed, “Why, is The Great Mammon so fast that the wind’s going to strip me naked if he puts even one foot forward?”  
  
“Somethin’ like that,” said the demon.

  
And then he started running towards R.A.D.

  
And then she realized how Bella Schwann must’ve felt when Edward Sullen the sparkly-skinned, fleet-footed vampire had spirited her through the forests (or however that had gone, because honestly, after the half-vampire baby had torn through Bella’s intestines during birthing, she wasn't so sure about her memory of finer romantic plot points). Levi had revealed in their conversation that Mammon’s thieving was hard to curb when he could run faster than most of the brothers, but it took the blurring scenery for this knowledge to _really_ kick into her brain.

Thank god— _gods_?—that she wasn’t prone to nausea, she thought as Mammon set her roughly down. Her legs felt freakish, like jelly, and she was actually trembling—

  
“Oi, human, what’s wrong? Are you sick? If you get any on me, I’m not gonna interfere if a lower demon tries eating ya,” the Avatar of Greed warned, scowl coming in fast and hard on his stupid perfect lips.

She shook her head ‘no’, then promptly collapsed as her legs gave way to weakness.

(A weakness not only born of the flesh, but of the mind, of the realisation that this was all really happening—the realisation that oh shoot oh _shoot_ demons were actually real and she was in hell and she was _screwed_ , because Mammon was _fast_ , and if someone like him tried to hurt her she wouldn’t even be able to react on time! She was _fucked_ , and oh, did they even have laws about assault here? Or respect women? Ah—)

“Aw, _Celestials_!” Mammon hissed, helping her up in a flash. “Come on, it’s—you’re okay, okay human? Yer not gonna die, alright? Alright?” He gave her shoulders a shake when she didn’t respond.

“I’m—no!” she blurted out, “What if I piss you off even more?”  


Mammon frowned even more. “Even—whuh?”

“I—I’m really sorry for being rude earlier,” she babbled, not even remembering what she did. “I really respect you!” Lies, fear wasn’t respect, but right now it had to be. “I’m sorry I upset you, sir, I—“ Tears bubbled in her large silver eyes.  
  
Mammon flinched as if she’d slapped him, the archdemon's angel-blue eyes wide.“What the… is that what this is about? Ya think I’m gonna hurt you or something? He clapped a hand over his face, holding her up with just the one. “Man, you gotta… you gotta be kiddin’ me….” It was hard to tell his expression, but he sounded rather strained. “You religious or somethin’?”

“I-I believe in God?” she squeaked, fear starting to subside some as she saw that he was making conversation rather than chewing her out.  
  
“Dad? Yeah, but the other stuff.”  


The exasperated sigh Mammon gave humanised him, and suddenly, as little as M.C trusted him, and as much as she was now starting to fear him, she felt a bit guilty. Perhaps it was the undeniable beauty he bore despite his uncouthness, or perhaps it was just her wanting a demon to have some kind of moral, mental parallel to a human’s, but… she felt bad for shutting him up some. He hadn’t really _done_ anything yet, after all. Just threats.

“Somewhat. The general idea, of heaven and hell and things like that.” She swallowed, legs still wobbling. “Um, _is_ this hell?”  
  
Mammon snorted. “Nah, that place is different, no one’d seriously wanna live there. This is just where _we_ live.”  
  
She nodded, trying to focus on this new information that she’d definitely have to flesh out later. “Okay.”

  
“Yeah. So you shouldn’t be scared all the time.” Blue eyes blinked, darted away, then glanced back at her, awkwardly staring at her tearstained cheeks. “Uh, so—“  


The young woman ducked her head. “I’m fine, we can go.”

Mammon instantly looked relieved, and all too happy to release her from his firm grasp. “We gotta go fast though—shit! Human!” He caught her by the shoulder. “Stop acting so damn ditsy and get ahold of yourself! If your legs ain’t broke then you can walk just fine. C’mon, if you keep actin’ like this ya really _are_ gonna get eaten. Demons love soft girls, okay?!”

She steadied herself on a marble column (Mammon evidently wanted no part in propping her up after the bout of tears).  “Okay, okay! I’m walking! I’m good,” she said in nervous irritation, trying to salvage the remains of her pride as she pushed herself back onto course and wobbled beside him. 

  
He eyed her impression of a duck-footed toddler. “That’s not walkin’—“

“Sure it is. Bite me.”

  
  
“I—“ He groaned loudly. “Damn, human, you’re somethin’ else. This is gonna take forever, ain’t it…”

******

She stared at the notice announcing the rescheduling of ‘Potions and Poisons’ lessons.

She stared at the notice announcing the rescheduling of ‘Potions and Poisons’ lessons, curiously pondering the strange, spiky script of Infernal after reading its human-language translations below. They said humans couldn't read Infernal, but if she tilted her head like so, wouldn't those first characters perhaps make up a 'P'--?  
  
“You left this behind, human,” said a melodious female voice from behind her, and said human turned on a ruby heel to look the speaker’s way.

  
Oh, and what a speaker it was. If the brothers had shown her the wicked beauty of male demons, then the woman before her was a study in cool feminine beauty. It was hard not to stare at the demonness’ silken, shining hair, which was a shade of blue so deep as to be almost black; it was nigh impossible not to stare at the almond, kohl-rimmed eyes which fluttered blue lashes above aquamarine orbs. Warm gold-tinted skin and a few blouse buttons racily undone, a lacy gothic choker and gleaming dagger drop earrings… had this demon walked straight out of a fashion magazine, or was she just some undead Japanese idol who’d sinned one too many times? 

“Here you go.”

A long, black-nailed hand waggled M.C’s missing D.D.D at her, snapping her out of her dreamy daze. The human looked up at the willowy demoness, who was running a calculating eye up and down her person, and blushed a bit. She’d met several female demons earlier that day, but none of them, pretty as they had been, had been as... as blatantly _bewitching_ as this woman.

A moment’s breathless silence, then—

“See you around,” said the taller woman, giving her a lazy, purple-lipped smile before sauntering off with a confidence that dripped of vintage coolness and some heady, honeyed perfume that trailed its notes in her wake. 

“It seems you’ve managed to attract Sitri’s attention,” remarked an amused voice from beside her. “Though that's not especially surprising, considering your newfound celebrity status here."  


M.C glanced at the human sorcerer who’d sat beside her a class ago, watching the way he canted his head at her and smiled as if some particularly pleased mouser playing with his prey. “What do you mean by that, Solomon?”

“I mean that it’s not everyone who winds up with a famous succubus’ number,” said Solomon mildly, gesturing towards her D.D.D screen where Karasu was dancing around in clear excitement at having entered a new contact. “Although Sitri's interest could admittedly just be due to the fact that you two appear to be lab partners for Potions.”

  
“Likely that,” she agreed modestly, gently tapping Karasu’s head to give him a little pat of thanks before slipping her D.D.D back into her satchel.

“Hmm, then again, I wouldn’t be so certain. After all, very few people wouldn't be curious as to what kind of human is being looked after by the Avatar of Greed himself,” Solomon tapped a finger against his chin, giving her an airy smile that seemed to be characteristic for him.

He breezed away like an errant feather on the wind as the aforementioned Avatar came sailing in, scattering nearby demons with just a few scowling steps.

“Hey, human! You talkin’ to Solomon?” Mammon demanded.

“Yes….should I not be?” she asked, trying not to sound completely deadpan.

Mammon rolled his eyes, gave a huff, and grabbed her hand. “C’mon, if class was moved we’re goin’ home. Wastin’ time at RAD gives me a headache. Time is money, y’know!”

*****  


<Hey, Master!>, Karasu’s tiny pastel form popped up on her D.D.D screen as M.C mulled over potential Dewitter and Devilgram handles for about the tenth time.

  
“Mmm, Karasu? What is it?” she asked, leaning back into the mass of pink pillows at the head of her bed.  
  
<I know you’re busy thinking deep thoughts, but I have updates for you! Can I tell you now?> The eyeless raven gave a cute, excited caw.  <Okay, so, I finished designing that avatar that we talked about! Since you couldn’t decide on what said ‘M.C’, I ended up going for a surname pun. I set it as your D.D.D auto-icon!>

She perked up as she checked it out. "Oooh, and it's pastel? Ah, thank you!"

<Just the right aesthetic, right?> Karasu said proudly, then suddenly cheeped and spread his wings, bouncing about the screen in a blur of pixels. <Master! You’ve just been added to your very first group chat! Title is: ‘House of Lamentation (new)’, the six other participants are—well, it’s kind of obvious, right? Hurry, two demons are typing—!!>

She jolted, setting her nest of blankets into mild disarray as she nearly hit herself in the face with her D.D.D in an effort to see the chat screen Karasu was helpfully opening up. 

—> **_‘M.C’ has been added to the group chat ‘House of Lamentation (new)’_**

**LEVIATHAN:** lol i can’t believe you forgot to add her to the gc, dumbass

**ASMODEUS:** was funny watching him scream at her lack of response though HAHA

**LUCIFER:** Welcome, M.C… and forgive me. Forgive the assumption of mine which lead to your belated entry to this conversation. Namely, I thought that adding you to our house chat would be accomplishable even by a demon like Mammon, but it seems that this is to serve as merely the latest item in our long list of his failures.

**MAMMON:** he y shhhupp i

**ASMODEUS:** lucifer’s typing, shut up!

**LUCIFER:** Sometimes I do think of submitting this list for formal publication, but then my conscience pricks me at the thought of wasting paper.

**LEVIATHAN** : lOOOOOL DIDN’T EVEN HAVE 2 USE HELLFIRE FOR THAT BURN;;AKSFJAKJL

**ASMODEUS** : HAHAHAHAHaHHa  
  
**BEELZEBUB** : lol don’t make me choke on my live newt pasta 

**LUCIFER** : Glad that you’re all so easily amused.

**SATAN** : hey, just caught up on Mammon’s monologues. It was a fairly unpleasant read. Please tell me this won’t become a regular thing, M.C?

**LEVIATHAN** : no y i live for the ‘moron demon rages at human pet’ stuff, rly good stuff like… m.c pls. pls. bc when mammon tries to be intimidating over text it’s like, loser meme max you gotta see lmaooo

**MAMMON** : y

**MAMMON** : YOU''  
  
**MAMMON** : yOU all SUCK ASS. same for you human!!! you suck the most!!L!!1 ;

Her fingers moved faster than her brain:

**M.C:** is that a request? sorry, but rimming jerks doesn’t rank on my soul’s to-do list rn  


**M.C:** smh go suck yourself, you seem to have inborn talent  


**M.C:**

**_ <SEVERAL DEMONS ARE TYPING....> _ **

**ASMODEUS:** oh oh oh honey. Help im  
  
**SATAN:** ……well, now. 

**LEVIATHAN:** NUKE NUKE NUKEEEE  
  
**ASMODEUS:** HAHHAAHAHAHHAfbf

**LEVIATHAN:** just heard mammoron from his room

**LEVIATHAN:** which means: SCREENCAP TO HOL HAll OF INFAMY

**BEELZEBUB:** told you all NOT TO SPAM WHEN I’M BUSY EATING NEWTS

**BEELZEBUB:** but seriously, way brighter than solomon’s? I knew I smelled something odd

**SATAN:** ….not that it takes much to have a nicer soul than his. But what’s even a pretty soul without a sin or two?

**LUCIFER:** Still, that little pink lamb avatar is deceptive, isn’t it?

**ASMODEUS:** hey, i’m deceptively adorable too, you know? and pink

**Leviathan:** ya but human is missing the 100,000,000 cock stare

**ASMODEUS:** rude! I’ll have you know I pride myself on being in the single digit millions smh 

**ASMODEUS** : ah m.c darling, I’m sooo sorry you have mammon as your mentor, i’ll ask Lucifer to swap right away~ then I can educate you about kink’s effects on the soul firsthand!!!

**LUCIFER:** Denied.

**ASMODEUS:** was worth a shot~  
  
**ASMODEUS:** hey m.c if it’s jerks you don’t like, why not try me? <3 

**LEVIATHAN:** lol I hear a door opening. I think mammon’s going to kill m.c, lock your door normie

**ASMODEUS:** oh! well never say no to necrophilia~~~

Her breath caught until she saw the next message:

**LUCIFER:** Leviathan, tell Mammon that if he takes one step towards M.C's door he’ll end up taking a stroll through Cerberus’ maw again.

She exhaled, passing a hand over her face as she cursed her knee-jerk reaction to Mammon's words. She wasn’t talking with a group of online friends here, she had to remember that. 

<Hey, M.C!> chirped Karasu, oblivious to her mental strain. <You have a new message from Sitri! Want to read it or keep chatting?>

“Um, read, please. Let me read.”’

Settling back into the comfort of her pillows, M.C hugged her plush poodle to her side and stared down at Sitri’s message:

**SITRI:** Hey M.C! I’m sure you don’t have much of a casual wardrobe right now, so a trip to Majolish or something could be a good idea for you, and it just so happens that I need to buy a few things, too. Want to meet up at the Devilplex in a few days' time? If you do want to come, we can invite Asmo and even that ‘guardian demon’ of yours to make sure you’re in the clear with your housemates. Sounds good? Let me know ASAP so we can figure things out! <3

She paused, then decided to type back cautiously:

**> >** Sure, if Mammon agrees then I’ll come. Thanks for the invite!

*****

A soft humph of consternation slipped out M.C's lips as her fingers slipped off the doorknob of yet another locked door. Mammon, for all his insistence on doing Lucifer ‘a favor’, had not seen fit to give her the full tour of the House he had promised at the start of the week. She knew well enough where the dining room was, and the kitchen, as well as Levi’s room and Lucifer’s study, but…that was about it—and even this scant knowledge was continually threatened by the House of Lamentation’s seeming ability to shift around. Did it have a set floor plan, or was it just like a moving castle? 

Irritation puffed the young woman's cheeks out as she stepped back and crossed her arms, trying to mentally map. Admittedly, she wasn’t the best at navigation, and more a creature of habit than a well-informed denizen whenever it came to places she inhabited, but she was convinced that the House of Lamentation's layout may have been constructed by some of the darkest magic she had yet to encounter.

As she stared stonily down the hallway, a door she’d tried twice after going in circles suddenly opened, yielding view of a certain demon. “Do you have some business up in this corridor, or are you just trying to get in your daily steps?”

Gaze flicking over to meet the curiosity of vibrant emerald orbs, the sulky girl deflated a bit, embarrassed. “Ah—well, frankly, I can’t find the laundry room. I only know where a few things are, and this place is…labyrinthine.”

  
The Avatar of Wrath’s lips curled wryly. “Shall I play your Ariadne, then?”

Her dulled eyes lit at his remark. “Please. No elopements or Dionysian elements required.“  
  
Chuckling, the golden-haired demon stepped out past the threshold of his doorway, closing the door mindfully behind him before gesturing over to her. “Come along, M.C. I’ll give you the proper tour that I wager Mammon’s shortchanged you on.”

Satan's use of her nickname startled her. “Thank you.”

“Of course," he replied, beginning to lead her down the corridor. "While it was lifted from the Human Realm, the House isn’t your ordinary home—one could even say that with its history, it has its own…whims and ways. One wrong step and you just might find yourself in the maw of some malignant animal, for instance.”  
  
White-lashed eyes widened as she tried focusing both on the way and his words. Satan’s remark had been spoken in a decidedly flippant way, but at the same time… “There are animals here?” She hadn’t noticed anything other than the weirdly empty aquarium in Levi's room…

  
“As far as pets go, yes, Lucifer has the one dog. You’ll meet him soon enough. Levi has a goldfish he dotes on—if you’ve been inside his room, then it was likely hiding from you inside the sandcastle. Other than that, though, we don’t generally keep pets.” A tilt of the head. “As for mythical monsters, I would advise you _not_ to interrupt Beel during a three AM fridge raid post-Fangol practice.”

Fangol--? Oh, foot-ball thing....right. “Duly noted. Where are we—ah, so the laundry room was downstairs. I thought for some reason—?“

“No, it’s here. Haha, well, it might’ve been once.” Satan smiled mysteriously. “Right, so now you should know where to go for that… how about the rest of the tour?”

******

They had always warned her that devils would be charming, but M.C hadn’t expected someone called the Avatar of Wrath to be a smooth talker. Satan wasn’t the prince of hell that various religions had made him out to be, but he may as well have been, for like Diavolo he possessed a certain magnetism, and spoke and behaved with that certain composed, princely flavour greatly adored in the great soup of shoujo anime and romantic comedies starring British-accented men. 

And she was ever so charmed. This demon, this _Satan_ , the politest of all devils she had met so far, introduced her to the House proper not only with charisma, but also care and clever counsel. He even brought slight smiles to her lips once or twice with his quips. In short, he was the dreamiest friend material one could ever have conceived—and she couldn’t help but relax a little in his presence. 

And that, she realized, made him a very dangerous man indeed.

“Here we have the Common Room,” said Satan, showing her in.

She took a careful look around. This room, as one of the impersonal chambers of the House, adhered to a dark, elegant code of decor; as such, it was no less impressive than all of the others Satan had shown her into. Well-lit by chandelier and fireplace, with beautifully gilded panel walls that made her think of the Renaissance, the Common Room actually was one of the more welcoming rooms. Even the massive dragon sculpted and fixedso as to look down over the fireplace was more inspiring than horrifying.

“One of my favourite elements,” Satan said, seeing her stare at a compellingly gloomy portrait. “Though I am also rather fond of this one here.”

She averted her suspicious stare from the flat eyes of the androgynously faced, cloaked figure and turned to accompany his gaze with her own. What she saw, though, absolutely startled her—no, it shocked her completely.

“Why is this here?” she asked in a slightly higher voice, what pale roses there were in her cheeks withering into absolute whiteness.

Perturbed, she stared into the glimmering, argent eyes of her younger self, perfectly immortalised in light, shimmering strokes of paint. Deftly and lovingly woven, the painting, with its subdued colors and gentle technique brought her to a still silence flecked by a tear or two—for there was no mistaking the hallmarks of her father’s cult paintings. She had only ever seen this painting in progress, and the one time in a gallery, but there was no forgetting what Dad had modestly referred to as one of his finest pieces.

The blonde-haired demon glanced over at her, his arms loosely folded as he arched one golden brow. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“I—how did you—I mean—?“ 

“I like to keep abreast of each era’s artists. Also, just as it’s good to know your housemates, it's good to know what exactly you’re putting on display in your own home, isn’t it?”

“I…I suppose so. Yes.”

“Had I not known of Henrick Ewe or his inspiration and model for this painting, however, it’s reasonable to assume I would’ve picked up on it eventually, isn’t it?” Satan cocked a feline smile, looking as though he were enjoying his little explanation. “As Asmo pointed out your first night here, your albinotic coloring isn’t exactly typical in humans. Besides that, your current appearance is foreshadowed by your younger self’s.”

“Fair enough,” she conceded, holding and hiding her face in one embarrassed hand. “But, why…why is this…the coincidence…”

Satan gave a loose shrug. “It _is_ quite a coincidence that the model for the portrait be our human exchange student and dorm mate, I’ll admit. Intriguing, really.” He cast an eye over the child in the painting, his eyes lingering on the bouquet she was holding.  
  
“Is there really a…um, who bought this painting? Lucifer?”

He shot her a slightly approbative smile. “Ah, now that _would_ make sense, wouldn’t it? Him being the head of our Household. But actually, it was Lord Diavolo’s painting originally. He brought it here, from his collection.”

  
Curiosity leaked into M.C's voice. “Why would he bring it here, if he originally deemed it worthy of belonging to a collection?”

Satan stepped back in a more distant appraisal of the painting—and her. “For contrast, perhaps.”

Luminous eyes went back to their own likeness, then to the rest of the common room, all dark and regal in aspect despite the fireplace's cheerful flames. Henrick Ewe's painting, which had a softness normally seen in watercolours, was indeed the brightest thing in the room; had she not been shorter than Satan (and the rest of the brothers) and standing well below the higher area the portrait resided in, then she supposed it might’ve drawn her eye more immediately as well. At any rate, he was right about the piece making a contrast—it seemed terribly out of place amongst the other paintings. Its gentleness didn’t suit the House anymore than she did...

Despite feeling there was more to the painting's presence than Satan was letting on (or knew?), she also felt that she wasn't about to get a satisfying answer even if she were to ask for one, so she changed tack.

“So…” her mind flashed back to how Levi had seemed startled by news of her father’s passing, and to all those things about time differences between realms that she hadn’t honestly paid much attention to in the last days of dazed, nervous excitement. “It’s a brand new piece, more or less.” (For her, though, nearly two decades had passed since its completion…)

  
“Yes,” said Satan smoothly, finally turning away to look at her head on. “Yes, it is a very recent installation.”

“Mm.” 

Her feelings numbed as she turned over the differences between her and this golden being who took the form of a beautiful human. Demonic powers or not, this was another gulf between her, a human transfer student, and these peers of hers. Was there any sense in bridging it, she wondered? What could Diavolo hope to gain from communing with humans, when most had no magic and were so objectively _inferior_ …?

Ah, but that was too much thinking for the moment, M.C supposed, trying to shove the bitterness back down the gorge. Safety aside, she supposed this difference was merely another point in favour of the arguments against _truly_ befriending demons: to them, a year of a human girl’s friendship would be like raising a butterfly for a pet — a fleeting summer fancy, nothing more.

  
“Thank you for the tour, Satan,” she said simply. “I found it very enlightening.”

"Then it was well worth my time."

(A mere drop from the demon's well, to be sure. All the same: what a smile--!)


	4. take the ride to the other side

**A/N:** Pretty pleased with this. Hope you all enjoy! <333 (Also, expect Beel next up...!)

* * *

_“I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.”_

_— Neil Gaiman_

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK TWO**

Funnily enough, Asmodeus didn’t seem all that keen on Sitri even though he agreed to go shopping with her, Mammon, and M.C; as soon as her tardiness became a few minutes too intolerable for his tastes, he began to examine his nails in an overly fastidious way, high voice spiking into cattier tones.

  
“Late as always. It seems the last few centuries’ holiday hasn’t managed to change that about her,” he sniffed at the tiny, sparkling pink roses painted onto his teal nails.

“Ain’t you the one who says being late is for the movers an’ the shakers?” Mammon asked with disinterest. He drooped boredly in his seat, legs spread akimbo and head hanging low over the screen of his D.D.D, where he was using the last of his battery power to make pulls in some sort of gacha game.

“Not applicable here, moron,” Asmodeus grumbled. “Why in the three realms would she make us wait in the food court of all places? Do I _look_ like I’m one of Beel’s crusty peons?”

“Wait, you haven’t seen her for the last few centuries?” M.C asked, to which Asmodeus shook his head.

  
“Apparently some witch she jilted decided to put her under a heavy-duty Sleeping Beauty curse.“

“But I’m wide awake now,” interrupted a sing-song voice, and Asmodeus’s whole demeanour changed instantly, as if the very faint note of scorn in his voice had been merely a lingering side effect of watching Mammon scarf down too many Ghost Tomato Fries.

  
“Sitri!” Asmodeus cooed.  


  
“Asmo, darling!” 

The Avatar of Lust and the queen succubus swapped air kisses like the two fabulous rich bitches they sincerely projected themselves as.

“Hey Mammon. Hi M.C. About that last text—are you sure you want to go back to the bottled blonde? Such a shame,” Sitri sighed, scooping her dark blue tresses into a high ponytail which she deftly clipped with an eerily verisimilar bird-skull. “but I guess we could stop by to make an appointment for your hair…dye jobs in the Devildom come grave-dirt cheap.”

  
“Illusion and body-mods are a much better investment,” said Asmodeus wisely, earning a nod from the succubus.

“Cheap is good,” said Mammon boredly, just barely raising a hand to acknowledge Sitri. “My human’s not a workin’ girl so she’s gotta save her money.”

  
  
M.C’s lips pursed in annoyance. “Yes. Oh, hey, look, a spare Grimm to put in my piggy bank. Tails up is good luck here, ri—oh.”  


Mammon had already banged his head into the cafeteria table in an effort to snatch the dull coin up from the floor. Rubbing his head, he scowled at M.C as if she had personally instructed the furniture to smite any shows of petty cupidity.

Their succubus companion giggled, not bothering to hide her amusement even as the Avatar of Greed shot her a similarly sniffy look. “How about that shopping, then?”

Asmodeus gave a dramatic sigh as he swiped a bit of lipgloss onto his already perfectly shiny lips. “ _Finally!_ That twenty off sale at Thots & Prayers isn’t going to last forever, you know?”

*****

The first two hours were swallowed up by the queue at Thots & Prayers, a two floor boutique that was by far the most garishly, wildly decorated, and amazingly inclusive shop for lingerie that M.C had ever seen in person (or on one of those ‘top ten crazy place lists’ online). Mallratting wasn’t really something she’d ever gotten into (shopping in malls was, for her, more a question of ducking in and out of the same old clothing stores), but she could see why various demons were pawing over the discounted wares. Its underwear catering to every possible gender expression and fashion taste, Thots & Prayers boasted everything from innocent white frills that revealed too much when you turned round to spiked leather cutouts that made human bikinis look like nuns’ habits. 

Asmodeus and Sitri, clearly in their element, wasted no time in planting a grumpy Mammon in the long line at the cash registers (Sitri paid him off to wait), soon dragging the human into a hellscape of moving mannequins and weirdly ropy garments that humans hadn’t yet invented names for. The young woman thoroughly resisted their efforts to ‘spice up her wardrobe’, though—all the underwear on display was so…thoroughly _hedonistic_ and crazy and beyond her comfort zone that she had a great time with dry commentary, but a poor time with trying to find something actually suitable.

“What do you wear normally, then?” Sitri said, then raised one blue eyebrow. “Or is it a question of feeling better without?”

M.C’s mouth opened and closed as she gave a stiff shake of the head.

“Oooh, did she get you there?” Asmodeus teased. “Tell us what all the pretty little repressed virgins are wearing nowadays, then.”

“Repre—what?” The human flushed.

Asmodeus’ pretty lips curved slyly as he gave her uniform bow a playful flick. “Did you really think The Avatar of Lust wouldn’t know something like that?”

“Fuck off, Asmo,” said Sitri disapprovingly. “Plenty of virgins wear things that Victorian teachers wouldn’t slap with a ten-foot cane. Also, M.C, don’t believe that load of mandrake mulch—I heard Asmo’s charms don’t exactly work on you, after all,” the succubus angled a smirk over at the Avatar, who grumbled about ‘slander’.  “Anyway, I know a cool low key place for lingerie and all that,” said the succubus, patting the human's shoulder pityingly. “No doubt Asmo hasn’t touched it since his first sloppy gangbang—” (Sitri's pretty blue eyes glinted with amusement as the Avatar looked oddly annoyed) "—but it should have something a bit more your speed.”

Extroverts. _Demonic_ extroverts. M.C wanted to die, but if Sitri was giving her a way out she’d gladly take it. “Um, sure, but I think I’d rather go there alone.”  
  
“Sure. How about you go some other day? We’ll walk past it so that you know where it’s at,” Sitri said equably, giving her shoulder an almost motherly squeeze. 

“Ah,” said M.C, then began to raise the point of her Guardian Demon being the last person she wanted scrutinizing her buys in an underwear shop. 

“It'll be cool. Just slip Mammon a few coins and he’ll lay off so you can—“

  
  
“Yeah?” asked a familiar rowdy voice as the white-haired demon stepped into view.

  
“Mammon!” Asmodeus hissed. “You were supposed to be waiting—“

  
“Had to take a piss,” the Avatar of Greed said unceremoniously. “You done, human?”

  
“Yeah, I am.”

“Thank underlords,” Mammon breathed, giving them all a surprisingly chipper smile. “Then we can go somewhere more—“ his eyes caught sight of the scandalous underwear piled high in Sitri and Asmodeus’ baskets, and he suddenly looked a bit embarrassed. “—y’know, _interestin_ ’. Let’s pay for your crap and go.”

“Y-yeah, sounds good,” M.C said, too embarrassed to point out that she hadn’t even taken a basket to place her non-existent purchases in.  
  
“As if we’re going to manage now,” grumbled Asmodeus sourly, hoisting his overflowing basket upwards. “I really didn’t want to have to charm my way into the front of the line today.”  
  
“Ooh, woe. Must be _sooo_ hard to use a few drops of an Avatar’s huge power source,” Sitri cooed in mock-sympathy. “As if Lust demons don’t do that every other store.”  
  
Asmodeus’ smile to her was sweeter than the most tasty of arsenic-laced bonbons. “Maybe the less respectable ones, you know? But it’s good to play nice with others, Sitri dearest.”  
  
“Says the one who once had the Infernal translation of _‘All’s Fair In Love And War’_ bedazzled right over his—“

“Ah, the line!” sang Asmodeus, pulling over to the front and arresting a lower demon with a predatory bat of his eyelashes. “Excuse me, but could you possibly consider switching positions with our group?”

Sitri rolled her eyes but pushed forward beside the Avatar anyway, not being particularly gentle as she hip checked another demon standing with the first, causing them to scowl at her until she slipped them a nasty ‘oh really’ kind of smile.

“Man, shoppin’ with these two always sucks,” Mammon sighed to M.C, trying to peer over to look at Sitri’s credit card until she moved her head in such a way that her high ponytail magically smacked him straight in the face. Frowning, The Avatar of Greed gave a grumble of irritation before saying, “I’m gonna pick the next place.”  
  
“Sure,” Asmodeus said happily, clearly satisfied with his purchases and the mysterious innovation of a ‘200th Demon Discount’ that he’d just received.

“Hmph,” grumbled Sitri, who was not quite pleased with her 201th Demon Discount being three percent less.

“What kind of place?” asked M.C curiously.

  
*****

Mammon’s choice ended up appealing to all parties involved: the demon model chose what was not only one of the largest but also the trendiest of general clothing stops, satisfying both the Lust demons’ desire for sartorial flare and M.C’s desire to have something a bit more normal. An outlet, Mammon said, but clearly a more upscale outlet at that—like the Americans’ Sundstrom Rack, if she had to compare. Majolicious was a great deal more interesting than the prim, neat-isled stores playing the same Hollywood pop ballads on repeat, though; like the lingerie shop before it, there was an inhuman zest to its presentation. Full of irregular shapes, flashy pieces, and neon colours that would’ve offended any human eye unfond of runway innovations, Majolicious was a genuinely _exciting_ store even for someone who didn't shop that often. 

There was one thing that prevented M.C from really enjoying it, though: the damned moving mannequins. She had thought the erotic magical dummies had moved too much in Thots & Prayers (that was to say, she was disturbed they moved at all), but clearly their shifting about had been meant to lull customers into happy, relaxed consumption, because Majolicious had substantially more… _interactive_ models. These too posed however the customers pleased on request, but they _also_ moved throughout the store and sort of…lingered. Hovered. Stalked people, even.

Frankly, she was horrified. Moving, blank-faced, fashionable mannequins were straight out of uncanny valley and a lot more disturbing than the human anatomy and dissection classes she’d once attended—a _lot_ more disturbing.

  
“Um,” she said nervously as one stood in front her, T-posing in an effort to show off the shiny sequinned hoodie-dress stretched down its breathing bust. Sitri and Asmodeus had gone to the section without casual wear, so it was just her and… Polly? Was that what the name tag said?

The white, faceless mannequin crooked its blonde-wigged head at her, inching closer. She tried not to let her dread show too fully on her face, though she couldn’t repress a nervous tremble of the lips. “N…no thanks, I’m good.”

The mannequin leaned in its head as if to say, ‘are you sure, sweetie’?

She stared it down, large eyes wide on the hollows were the sleek-jointed dummy's eyes would’ve been. Perhaps it was a question of not showing fear, like in negotiating with terrorists, so—wait, how long could she maintain eye contact anyway?

A creak and she stopped breathing as fingers just a bit whiter than her own reached out as if to show off bracelets—or to grab for—

A shift in the air and someone was suddenly by her side. “Oi, she said to piss off,” snapped Mammon, pulling her back. “Hey, human. Don’t let them pressure you into buyin’, okay?”

“Is that what Polly wanted?” she asked faintly, letting him steer her deeper into the valley of lounge wear, which he himself had been perusing from the men’s side. 

“Polly _who_ —oh, next time tell it ‘no thanks’ and use that name. That should work…. though not if ya act like that.”  
  
Having no desire for another character analysis from Mammon, M.C did not ask what ‘That’ was. Instead, she tried for conversation to soothe her nerves and satisfy the curiosity bubbling up inside her. “Who invented those, anyway?”

“Some guy from Greed. Works on peer pressure, you know?” said Mammon stolidly, watching the human pick up a pair of relatively black-and-red sweats with the eye of a parent who was considering investing in a child leash.

“Oh,” she said, picking out a matching sweatshirt, then turned to him. “Ah…thank you, then. For intervening.”

Blue eyes flicked away as he shrugged, skirting a hand through his own basket, before looking back at her. “Yeah, just pay for what I’m buying, alright?”  
  
Greedy guardian jerk. “…sure.”  
  
“Great,” he smiled cheekily, in that sort-of endearing way that made her almost want to smile back. “Hey, are you seriously gonna just load up on those? Ain’t ya gonna pick out something more…” 

“More what?”  


Mammon looked almost embarrassed as his deep hands gestured out a woman’s hourglass silhouette (which, unfortunately, was her own body type as well). “Match what ya bought earlier…” He was now contemplating a watch adorning a mannequin named Qwerty.  
  
She flushed then, getting what he meant. “I didn’t buy anything... earlier.”  
  
“Oh—uh—ya packed… a lot then?” He wasn’t looking at her now for sure.  
  
“Yeah, everything I need!” M.C reassured him quickly, not wanting to discuss fancy underwear with a man evidently paid very well to model it. 

“Oh. Well, ya really okay lookin’ like Levi on his bad binge nights?” A blue eye looked skeptically at the hoodie she was clutching.

  
The young woman bristled. “You mean my choices are too sloppy for your liking?”

  
Mammon jerked his gaze back, staring down at her through his tinted sunglasses. “Hey, The Great Mammon is just being charitable with his advice, alright? For a human who binges fashion ya sure don’t actually wear a lot of what ya seem to own. Your closet back home? Dated by your standards, since humans go through fashion real quick.”  
  
Ouch, he had her there. M.C knew exactly why she wasn’t wearing those things, and it wasn’t for lack of interest (well, mostly—a lot were gifts from Mom and Angelica). “Tell you what, next time we go back to my place we ought to sell the stuff in my closet and you can go shopping with me. Show me what _you_ like,” she said quickly.

The idea of a shopping spree in the Human Realm on someone else's dime perked Mammon right up and threw him off the scent. “Hey, know what? That's common sense right there,” he said happily, leaning over to scoop an accessory ring off a mannequin and…swiftly put it in his pocket.

M.C's eyes widened as she looked around for witnesses or cameras. “Hey—“  
  
“It was on discount,” Mammon said blithely, meaningfully. “Gotta teach ya how to save money, darlin’. Think about it. Mama birds push their kids out the nest, right?”

_Darlin’_ was an improvement on human (however temporary), but her morals didn’t like the cost at which it might come.

“Uh, no. Thanks, Mammon. I’ll pay. Come on—“ she reached out only to have the demon catch her by the wrist, his blue eyes dancing.  
  
“That monthly stipend from Diavolo ain’t gonna take you that far,” he said, something unusually mischievous in his gaze fixing on her silvery orbs.

She shuddered, staring back as his gaze seemed to swallow hers. She was fascinated by him in that moment, not having seen this side to him before, or been close enough to discern the gold lacing his otherwise entirely empyrean eyes.

“Didn’t ya like that charm bracelet earlier?” Mammon's grin was very white now, like the ones from ads for sugar free gum, or wolves’ teeth, and everything outside his face seemed to blur out as he talked. “The one over in that section near the front? Real silver, ya know. Sitri was right—ya looked real pretty with it on. Suits your skin and shows off your wrists.”

The blush was back, and she swallowed. Where did Mammon learn to lower his voice like that? She would’ve pegged deep-voiced Lucifer as the secret phone sex guy, not his loud-mouthed second in command—

“No thanks,” she repeated, though more unsurely now.

Mammon's smile became brighter.

  
“Ya sure?”  
  
Her gut churned, and something in her revolted as she recalled Asmodeus and realised what this demon was probably trying to do. “I’m sure,” she repeated more firmly now, white-silver gaze hardening to metallic point.

The unblinking blues stared challengingly, and she could’ve sworn she saw the gold in them flare and pulse with yellow light. Still she forced herself to stare back, long white lashes not daring to flutter as she watched his eyes—

But the golden glow seemed to fade suddenly, and Mammon broke first, laughing as if though this had all been a supremely funny joke that hadn’t made M.C’s dainty little human neck start to sweat from the strain of looking up at a stronger specimen doing his best to peer pressure her…magically or otherwise.

“Alright, just messin’ with ya.”

Mammon drew away, though didn’t put back what he’d shoplifted; rather, he deftly plucked a nearby watch from a display and fiddled with it before slipping it down his shirt.

“Let’s finish up soon, yeah?”

She held back the nervous sigh for all of two seconds. “Yeah.”

He patted her on the back as if he hadn’t just been trying to dim her immortal soul or whatever. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna use your card too much.”

“That’s alright, I was dying to break it in anyway,” she said sarcastically, to which Mammon smiled and hummed in a happy childish sort of way.

“You bet. Let’s make Goldie proud,” he said, seeming to be in a better mood now as he guided her over to a different, somewhat girlier section.

“Who?”  


*****

Pill bottles full of melatonin and herbals lay untouched on her dresser as M.C sank into bed that night, tired out from yet another day’s systematic shocks to her whole concept of existence. She’d barely touched anything resembling literature, manga, or film even though many of her favourite things could apparently be found through Akuzon, streaming, or digital piracy; to her, the Devildom was like a virtual reality game played on a flashy new console she wasn’t yet familiar with, and she was desperate to learn all the buttons and rules, drifting through her days in the Devildom in a state of enraptured, horrified curiosity. 

Soon enough, sleep folded round her eyes, and after hours a dream came...

_ Once aware of it, she found herself lounging in a wicker chair, having ice cream in a garden that she instinctively knew to be a secret one. Opposite her at the table was a flame-haired stranger whose face she couldn’t see, but recognised by dream sense: she’d often spoken with her in the past, often to interesting results.  _

_ Curiosity compelled her even in her unaware dreaming state, and M.C strained to see the woman as they enjoyed their lively conversation, a babble of nonsense that she forgot as soon as it was spoken. Yet as in the past, every time the girl shifted in her worn seat, trying to peek under the wide brim of the blanched sunhat the woman wore, the shadows surrounding the woman’s face only deepened, obscuring it further. _

_ Despite this enforced anonymity, however, the woman's presence wasn't unwelcome. She was a wonder in conversation, her words warm and full of a light that always seemed to stay with M.C long after she was gone, and she brought a smile to M.C's face just with her continued support. _

_Wanting to acknowledge that, M.C tried to speak._ Thank you for coming, _she said._

It's no trouble, the redhead replied, _her warm presence washing over M.C in a balmy breeze._ Ah... everything’s going to be alright, you know?

I know, _the young woman replied dreamily._

Yes. I have faith in you, s _aid the faceless beauty, her long unruly tresses stirred by some nonexistent breeze of M.C’s imagination._ It’s okay. It’s always hard at the start. Things will get better. Trust me.

Okay, _said the young human, dipping a spoon into her dessert._

Say, it’s been a while since you had an offline friend. Online friends are real ones, darling, just as your feelings towards them are, but don’t be afraid to reach out to people offline, alright? _The kind presence smiled._ It’s what humans do best, reaching out…

Um, _said M.C, departing from her script as she grew more lucid in the dream now._ But demons—

  
Aren’t people? Come on, is that really what you think? Remember Mammon’s reaction from that day? 

  
_M.C bristled at the woman who had long ago announced herself as a dream guide._ I just learned they’re real! I don’t know—maybe he just hates girls crying and can’t kill weeping widows, so what?! I can’t—

Yes, you’re right. Trust needs to be earned. You’re scared right now for a good reason. As a human, I wouldn’t trust them either. Still, I know you’re open-minded. I know you try your best to understand things. I know how soft your heart can get, so it’s good that you guard it so well. Just remember that if you reach out, maybe someone will reach back. As long as you’re careful it’ll be okay. Just pick the right person.

_ M.C glanced away, considering this. _

If you're not sure of who to engage, then try someone who looks for you first, _said the woman._

_ M.C nodded, looking more directly at her companion now. The shadows pulsed again, and the grip on her spoon slackened as her mind fuzzed and she lost her place in the dream, tongue starting to wag on again about irrelevant things like flaming teapots and fanged ravens— _

_They talked for such a while that the sky began to sprinkle starlight ere long, the shadows growing to greater strengths for every word and giggle exchanged. Soon enough the dream-night was so vast that it seemed to sweep away M.C’s dream guide entirely, spiriting her away in a dark, glittering cloud of smoke._

_ M.C sighed as the garden seemed to lighten in the woman's absence, thinking it was much like lights coming on after a good play. Pity. They'd just been getting to the gossipy bits, too... she'd wanted to dish on those demons and angels with  _ some _ one so  _ badly _ — _

Oh. _It was then that she realized, to her intense dismay, that the Woman In White had taken all the cutlery away, and the ice cream parlour nearby was closed. Perhaps if she asked the gentleman at the front she could sing a song in return for another scoop... then again,_ _ why was there a parlour in a secret garden, to start with?  _

Ah. _She gained some lucidity back as the error clicked._

_Just in time, too, for it was then that a pair of lithe arms wrapped snugly around her. Found you, sang a cheery voice she did-but-didn’t-know._

Let me go, _she grumbled automatically, even though it felt nice being embraced by someone who smelled so…comforting._

  
  
Bad mood now? Ah, come on, you don’t even have grounds for that. You weren’t even hiding particularly well this time, _the soft male voice laughed, but the owner pulled obligingly away. Come on, we’ll give you a head start this round._

_ She wondered how many characters this dream was supposed to have as she slowly turned round, brushing errant, fluffy white locks away from her eyes and mouth— _

Why so serious? _The Moon Man smiled back at her, the skin around his empty eyes creasing with the smile on his face._

_ She froze as he stepped closer, eyes boring into her. For a moment she could not but stare, looking at his windswept hair and unusual gentleness with mounting suspicion and fear. It was possible that he truly didn't recognize her, but if she'd learned anything about this world it was that the subconscious could pervert good dreams almost instantly... _

_ So she stepped forward. _

_ And then she made to run, choosing to focus on a dream-ability that had always served her well during nightmares by phasing right through the Moon Man and the garden walls, dream-heart tumbling even as she did.  _

Wha—hey! Where’re you going? _the dark-haired stranger shouted in confusion, as if he hadn’t tried to claw after her in the last cosmic nightmare he’d appeared in. He was quick to give chase, however, for she soon heard vines shifting and undergrowth snapping as feet pounded after her, across the overgrown field she had torn through and towards the forest that she was aiming to lose him in._

_ Willing the tall-growing trees, rapidly melting into sawdust and shadows, to open themselves into a door that would take her out of the nightmare, M.C sped forwards and focused her willpower on the concept of waking up. Her desperation made her strong: almost immediately the trees' branches cracked and shook, twisting with agonised groans as they bent boughs to form a crooked archway beyond which a blinding white light began to shine. Shaking, she went forwards, ignoring the strange lap of vines--whips, tentacles, feelers?--at her back— _

You can't, _the Moon Man shouted, but it was too late: she was in the light now, and beyond it, her live body was exiting its paralysis—_

Eyes cracked open as she jolted into consciousness, bolting upright in bed and activating the magic which seemed to dimly light the candelabra whenever it registered her as waking during the night.

The Moon Man was gone, and she was awake.

She was awake.

She was _safe_.

And if the skin on her back was tingling still, then it was, assuredly, just her imagination... wasn't it?

*****

“Hmm, M.C? I must admit, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.”

“Ah, yes, sorry for turning up a bit early. I was musing on your last message rather excessively last night, and impatience got the better of me.”

Solomon’s gray-white brows rose, but no question was posed by those thin perpetually smiling lips of this; instead, he merely raised one slender hand to push the door open so as to let her into Purgatory Hall. The young woman swept in briskly, red shining heels giving swift clicks as she determinedly set forth, a goal so singlemindedly on her mind today that she spared only the briefest of glances at the entrance hall.

She heard Mammon traipse in behind her with a grunt of acknowledgement at Solomon’s hello, but didn’t pay him any mind as Luke manifested almost immediately in the entrance hall, bouncing on his heels with a puppy-like excitement that dangerously tipped the platter of sparkling pastel, cream-filled sugar puffs he was holding. “M.C! You’re here early, aren’t you?”

She nodded, then peered down at the silver platter. “Hello, Luke. What are those? They’re very enticing.”

The small angel drew himself up a bit straighter and puffed out his chest, his energetic smile slightly smug now. “Oh, these are—“  
  
“Cloud Creams! Yo, these are my favourites!” Mammon said in a burst of excitement, swooping in to pluck a white one off the silver, throwing it like popcorn into his mouth. “Mmmhphisgood!”

“Hey, back off, demon!” Luke scolded, trying desperately to keep away the platter from Mammon’s greedy fingers, which were already stained with cream and snatching up an additional two puffs. “These are meant to be _shared_!”

“Huh, okay then,” Mammon replied glibly, managing to thieve another before the angel more prudently jumped backwards. “Here, human.”

M.C's eyes popped as he cut off the tart words forming on her tongue with a well placed cream puff. Instinctively she held the thing with her mouth, only just biting down into the sweetness spun sugar and strange, ice cream-like softness; as her mouth wasn’t large enough to fully accommodate the hefty puff, it was all she could really do without making a sloppier mess of eating.

Mammon laughed outright at how grumpy she looked. “Haha, human, the look on yer face, shit—“

“Hey! No swearing o-or weird force-feeding!” Luke looked like the tiniest, brittlest, liveliest of dogs now, like a chihuahua who would’ve happily bitten an ankle or two had it not been for responsibilities weighing him down.

Mammon had already whipped out his D.D.D and snapped a picture of her, though, leading both human and angel to mutually protest (Luke with a yelp; M.C with a muffled swear).

Solomon reminded them of his presence with a chuckle that made all three jump; he was watching from a position near an alcove boasting a large, gold-spiralled vase. “Hmm, that’s a good shot, though,” he said. “M.C, after you swallow, do you want to come with me so that we can discuss things?”

Her cheeks flared at how the sorcerer phrased his question, but she nodded as she pulled out the puff and tried to quickly wipe away any bits of white stuffing.

  
“My, you all are lively today, and you haven’t even progressed beyond the foyer,” said a new, amused voice as gentle as the beat of a dove’s wing.

M.C turned eagerly around to look for Simeon.  She brightened a little as she caught sight of him looking out a door down the hallway. The older angel's presence was exactly that which she expected from his kind, a soothing balm to the senses that made her feel quite a bit better about being a powerless human in the demons’ heartland. She didn’t know Simeon too well, of course, but she liked every appearance of his at school, finding herself looking forward to his company in the way her poodle Vanilla Bean had once looked forward to hers. 

(Indeed, seeing him preside here made her feel a great deal more assured about her under-the-table ‘consultation’ with Solomon…)

“Hello you two. Don’t mind Luke. He made today’s spread for you to enjoy, so I doubt he truly minds a little eagerness on your parts,” Simeon said.

“Th-that’s crazy talk, Simeon!” exclaimed the little blonde angel, giving a shake of the head in a lame attempt to deny it.

Simeon merely smiled indulgently at his young peer who was apparently his charge as well. “Ah, Mammon, I have more snacks in the Common Room. Why don’t you come over and sample them? I doubt you’ll find much of interest to M.C’s homework session with Solomon, after all.”

The grey-white haired wizard nodded, eyes flickering to M.C and holding their gaze meaningfully. 

Knowing what meaning that look intended to convey, M.C turned immediately towards the white-haired demon, tucking back an errant lock of her own wavy hair. “Thanks for escorting me here, Mammon, but Simeon's right. We’re just going to talk theories and the like. I'll try not to keep you waiting too long, though. I promise.”

Blue-gold orbs lit before eying her in a sharp way that made the flesh on her neck prickle nervously—but then Mammon gave a grin that pulled some of the tension out of her shoulders. “Don’t gotta tell me twice,” he said carelessly, moving towards Simeon. “Have fun being nerds together. Shout if ya need me, human. I got good ears.”  
  
“Now, why would M.C want to do that?” Solomon smiled, to which Mammon frowned and made no reply, merely biting into another Cloud Cream before disappearing with Simeon. 

Giving another chuckle, the elegant wizard ushered for the human girl to follow him.

******

Purgatory Hall was better lit than the House of Lamentation, yet when she entered Solomon’s room it were as if something living alongside the sorcerer quenched all stray flames or bursts of electric energy present in the room: not only were all the windows covered in strange, starry shrouds, but despite the various glowing lanterns stationed thoroughout the room, every object there seemed dimmed, faded out, blurred in ways that didn’t let you really see edges or perceive true colors. As a person who loved sleep for its magic and comfort, she could safely say that Solomon's quarters put her in mind of dreams, which were never truly in focus. 

It put her on the same edge as did the House of Lamentation after nightfall—only it was _daytime_ here, and she didn’t have the option of locking herself up after dinner...

(her back tingled again, as if the Moon-Man, whose beautiful face was hard to recall by daytime, was present—and she shuddered)

Swallowing, she tried to focus on _what_ was in the room, and not _how_ it really looked. Solomon's belongings were all interesting, that was for sure—many were items she might’ve seen in any storybook or motion picture about spells and witchcraft. She tried to remember it all for later reference: jars of purple pickled organs she couldn’t name; winding piles of tomes whose lack of dust spoke of recent use; a transparent, sealed pitcher full of glowing mushrooms... on a round table in the corner were baskets of raw crystals that she remembered Mom liking for 'energy healing'… in another corner, there was an orb like from the stories about mediums and fortunetellers…

“You may speak freely here. I have a privacy ward in place,” said Solomon, gesturing for her to take a seat. “If someone comes to eavesdrop, we’ll be alerted immediately.”

“Ah,” she murmured, as if she knew what exactly a ward was, and sank into one of two slightly worn blue armchairs facing each other. She stared at the small globe standing between her and Solomon as he sat down, not willing to meet his eye until she knew what she wanted to say.

When the right words did come to mind, she looked up at him, for gauging a person’s reactions during any sort of bargaining was crucial, and for a person as strange as Solomon reputedly was, observation would be doubly important. 

She took him in for a second. Composed as ever, Solomon was all laced fingers and discreet airs of refinement. He was almost like a demon or angel in his handsomeness, with thick white hair that had touches of gray, smooth skin a few shades rosier than her own, and engaging eyes... engaging eyes so mutable she couldn’t pinpoint their exact color even in normal settings and lighting. But handsomeness wasn't all there was to him, for his intelligence was plain to see, and he was apparently a wizard of great repute, too… for a human, he was rather unworldly. 

But he _was_ human, and if she was going to make pacts, she’d prefer to make one with a person who had a set expiration date, first. The thought of Solomon asking for something in return didn’t worry her as much as the thought of demons wanting things, because, if she managed to get what she wanted out of this, she’d be able to stave off both demons _and_ inhuman sorcerers.

“I want to know about things I can’t find online, or in the school library,” M.C said, without preamble. “About… magic. And consorting with demons.”

“Oh?”

The way his eyes crinkled made her feel as though she were in front of an ancient sage considering whether it was worth imparting a certain piece of wisdom to his pupil, and his smile made her stomach jump in nervousness, but she pressed onwards nonetheless.

“I refuse to believe that I have no magic,” M.C said, a note of insistence in her voice despite her typical, blank expression. “I had to have been chosen out of so many humans for _some_ reason, right? I can only think of magical hidden potential or… my soul. But I’m sure there are many souls like mine, or better.”

Pale lips twitched as Solomon’s fingers knit together, cradling.

“They wouldn’t say you are without magic for no reason.”  


Red lips pursed as she stared back stubbornly. “Right. I’m sure they ran a background check, or something like that—”

  
  
“Ordinarily, magic manifests in humans rather early on in life. You are very young, of course, but it’s a bit past the time that magic would normally make itself known.”

  
“ _Normally_. What if it were latent?”

“Cases of latent magic are far and few in between, but...” Solomon's indefinite eyes stared at her. “Bringing that magic out is another matter entirely.”

  
“Could it be done, though?”

  
  
“ _If_ present, then theoretically, yes,” he said, crossing one leg over another with that certain fluidity of motion seen in demons and angels, who had centuries to accustom themselves to their bodies. “Are you certain you should be asking these questions of me, though?”

She grew a little quieter in her next reply. “No, I’m not certain. But I’ve heard that you know a great deal about magic, and I know you have seventy-two pacts…”

“Is it pacts you’re ultimately after, then?” Solomon asked bluntly.

M.C chose her next words carefully, speaking slowly as she tried to curb her nerves at the new, more critical aspect to his demeanor. “Unlike you, I know little about this world that I’ve been thrust into, and while the curriculum for my education at RAD may have been constructed with the best intentions of mind, I fear that my curiosity compels me to supplement that knowledge. I can’t very well help Lord Diavolo with his dream if I know only the bare basics about the three Realms—about demons. I want to be a proactive learner…

And as a person, I want to be all that I can.”

Her answer hung in the air for a moment as Solomon seemed to turn it around in his head, the expression on his face betraying none of his thoughts. She glanced away from the unnerving young man, pretending to be interested in an elaborately painted, bejewelled fan displayed on a small shelf near his bed as she watched him from the corner of her eye.

She needn’t have held her breath, however, for Solomon soon gave a soft laugh.

“I like how you think, M.C.”

The young woman properly turned her long-lashed gaze onto the sorcerer, watching how his strange eyes glittered at her.

“Enough to help me?”

“Quite enough. It’d be my pleasure to help you learn more about the three Realms and…matters not covered by the curriculum,” murmured Solomon, leaning back in his armchair. “So tell me… what is on your mind right now?”

“I’d like to ask that you point me in the direction of some resources. Above all, please just help me however you see fit… I don’t wish to trouble you unduly," she said, then paused. “And how can I help you in return?”

He chuckled. “Making deals already… you think like a demon, don’t you?”

  
  
Wariness flicked through her eyes. “If I’m to be indebted to you I’d like to know up what you want upfront.”

  
  
“Hmm, but _will_ you owe me anything, really? I don’t know,” mused Solomon. “Perhaps I’d like to do this out of generosity. Or curiosity. Boredom. Though if you insist on setting a price to make this more comfortable for you, then I would say that you _could_ assist me from time to time. Now don’t look so alarmed—I just meant polishing crystals and other wares, things like that. Perhaps sharing your class notes with me now and then?” A wink.

She furrowed her brow. “Don’t make fun of me. I'm the one who asked to take pictures of your notes.”

“Ahaha, true enough,” said the young man in light response to the girl's grumble. “Well, how about you spend some time with me now and then? I’m sure you could use some human company anyway—“  
  
A sharp chime sounded through the air then and the two pale-haired humans looked over at the door. They heard nothing from outside, but clearly there was someone…there.

“Asmo and I are on good terms,” said Solomon lightly, watching the door as she bit her lip. “He invites me over sometimes, though I don’t always accept those invitations… but now perhaps I will have more reason to. After all, I have a fascinating new friend in you, don’t I, M.C?” 

Despite knowing full well that he was putting on a show for the eavesdropper’s benefit, she was mildly flattered. “You hardly know me, Solomon. I wouldn’t call us friends,” she mumbled, twisting a lock of hair around her finger in fidgety embarrassment.  


  
“And yet I think of you as one already. But ah, look at the time—perhaps you’d like to start on the rest of that history homework you were having problems with?”

She nodded, then played along by literally pulling out her things from her bag and earnestly chattering about work until a pair of chimes sounded and Solomon nodded at her, indicating that the intruder had crept off. He then rose and turned away from her to go look through a stack of books lodged firmly beneath his desk, pulling out two small volumes which he then carried back and handed over to her.

“Read these. And try to do so while the sun’s shining.” A dryness crept into his smile. “That is, during the hours at which the Celestial realm would normally have daylight… those would be the best.”

She nodded, but soon positively recoiled once her fingers really sank into the borrowed items’ texture, and she realised what ghastly manner of leather the dark books were bound in. 

(She could barely look at the moaning, agonized human mouths embossed across the covers after that…)

“You’re not easily nauseated, I hope,” said Solomon, who was watching her carefully.  


  
She shook her head no.

  
“Jump scares?”

“Hate them.”

He smiled.

“Then you ought to be in for a fun read.”


	5. started here from zero in a city like a jungle

**A/N:** I'm going to edit previous notes as we go on—mainly to address things like fake brands and other references, but also to include an incredible visual reference of M.C's uniform concept as drawn by the amazingly skilled **@RUJELLYROLL** on Twitter! Please do check her **[twitter](https://twitter.com/rujellyroll)** to see her lovely works and give her a follow. :) Cactus, this chapter is for you—I honestly can't tell you enough how much I adore your taking my sketchy concept and fleshing it out into something so gorgeous!

I'd also like to give another thank you to everyone who has left reviews in one way or another so far! Although I haven't been able to catch up on replies to those yet, I truly appreciate you taking time out of your day to do so, and your interest in the story makes me very happy. I love hearing about what you liked, as well. It really encourages me to continue! :) 

Without further ado, chapter five! 

* * *

_“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.  
_ _My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”_

_  
― Jane Austen, 'Pride and Prejudice'_

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK THREE**

_ 'Demons tend to enjoy making allusions to souls and the corruption thereof. While it is true that even Lower-ranking demons shows a knack for discerning the personality of a human they are dealing with, this is no talent unique to them, for the Immortale Species as a whole are known to have a talent for observation which is likely honed by their prodigious lifespans…' _

  
She nodded to herself after she finished re-reading the paragraph, then skipped down to read another.

‘ _As it is, souls in their entirety,'_ the page read, _'are not visible to the vast majority of demons. Those who fall into the Lower category have admitted to this author that they are only able to catch glimpses of the soul—and very occasional glimpses at that. Stronger demons, however, have clarified that this aura manifests to their eyes as an outline surrounding the human…'_

_ '…Archdemons, the rarest of demon breeds, have means of discerning the soul that transcend mere visual observation, but this merits more extensive discussion than this introductory tome allows for, as Archdemons—' _

  
Pale eyes squinted. Were the words ‘Archdemons’ warping beneath her gaze, or was there merely a wrinkle in the page that time hadn’t yet smoothed—?

Eh, didn't matter. M.C sighed, then went back to a different line.

_ '…and so, the most common use of a pact for a demon is to gain further access to that Gem-Forme soul, for even the darkest of human spirits still holds unique power.' _

Coughing after inhaling too much of the tome’s reek, M.C stopped there, laying the book down on her desk and standing from her seat. Waving a hand around to dispel both the unusual staleness around the area and the crawling feelings present after reading, she focused on the strains ofberry-tart perfume emanating from the tiny, tightly-closed flower buds that had appeared on the room's tree overnight, trying to refresh her senses. Once she was sufficiently relieved, she sighed, then looked back at the book.

  
To her surprise, she found that parts of the pages had grown bumpy while she hadn’t been watching. Drawing closer, she leaned down to stare at ‘a human soul holds unique power’, fascinated by the way in which the words now stood out. Had she done something? Or had it—

Some of the resting pages fluttered suddenly as if stirred by a breeze or a breath or—or perhaps a low, unearthly groan rolling out from somewhere in the book’s foremost parts. She jerked her face back instantly, then upon another airless flutter of the pages all but shoved the bookto the furthest point of her desk; hastily throwing a spare uniform jacket over the magical book in an effort to muffle the horrible sighs starting to erupt from it, M.C cursed inwardly as she backed off like a spooked cat.

  
She would've said what the _hell,_ but she didn't want to speak anything stranger into existence... ugh. Hopefully it would go and take a god-forsaken nap now. 

  
(She should’ve known not to expect good things from tomes about demons bound in _human-sourced leather._ )

A hearty caw broke through her chilled huffing shortly. <Master! M.C! This is your timer going off! It’s time to go and pick the grave peppers for Mr. Lucifer!>

Ah, she had to go and do that…? Oh, right: after noticing how the eldest Avatar was often locked up in his study working—a quality that reminded her of her own late father—that part of her which wished to ingratiate herself with him had grown a bit out of sympathy, and when she’d heard Lucifer was cooking for everyone that evening (a task she was to assist in starting the following week), she had impulsively volunteered to fetch some ingredients from the vegetable garden somewhere in the back. 

“Thanks, Karasu.” 

Eager for an excuse to get out of the tome’s presence, she retrieved her boots and the strawberry-coloured coat she had bought on Sitri’s advice.

<Don’t forget me,> chirped Karasu from the D.D.D holder on her nightstand. <Remember what Mr. Lucifer said: you need a source of light out there! I have a flashlight feature you can use—>

“Lucifer said a lantern would be better for the plants, though,” she told Karasu, who fluffed up in indignation nonetheless, causing pastel feathers to drift about the lock screen where he had been previously snoozing. “Sorry, but even if it weren’t, you’re a bit talkative and they said it’s important to be quiet down there.”  


  
<But I can be muted!>

"It’s okay, Karasu," she said as she laced her boots. "We’ll definitely have fun later when I download that Mononoke Island thing Leviathan keeps spamming me with invites for."

  
<‘kay,> sighed the digital demon grumpily, his tinny voice fading out as she set briskly out, just minding to lock the door behind her for Mammon’s sake.

*******

Pale fingers tightening around the rusty hook of the lantern she was carrying in her left hand, M.C glanced at the gloomy sky. It was daytime, yet Erebus held the Devildom fast by the throat, for the rays of the upper Devildom moon, a replica of the human world’s, illuminated very little, and the few lamps posted throughout Lamentation's grounds served best as mere decoration. She wasn't necessarily afraid of the dark, but the Devildom's darkness was far inkier than the human world's, and her sharp nighttime vision failed her here, making her rather regret her impulsiveness...

Perhaps, she thought, shivering despite her coat, she should’ve offered Mammon more Grimm to come with her. Last week he’d said he wouldn’t accompany her outdoors at Lamentation, but she’d thought that it had been a conditional statement on his part until he’d surprised her today by not coming along despite—despite!—accepting her bribe. She could only suppose that Mammon had fallen down some wormhole on Deviltube and even extra money hadn’t been enough to tempt him outdoors (maybe his favourite e-demons had been streaming? The way he’d slammed an arm over his laptop to prevent her from seeing the Deviltube video and scowled about ‘humans being so damn nosy’ had been shifty for sure)... well, either way, she should’ve bartered more cleverly with The Avatar of Greed. Any discomfort in this situation was on her… probably.

But surely she could manage without Mammon or Karasu, she reassured herself, stepping carefully across the old purple grass growing soft and low across the property. She had survived her first days in the Devildom, and surely the outdoors was nowhere near as frightening as the indoors… not to mention that Mammon would have to answer to Lucifer if something were to happen to her, and from what she’d heard, Lucifer had a most _cultivated_ streak of sadism…

She stopped walking for a moment to stare into a bed of red-spattered white lavender, her lantern wavering cyan firelight over the flowers. Had she just seen something move between the fragrant blooms?  Unable to keep herself from kneeling down, she soon did so, reaching one out cautious hand to wave at the flowers. Satan’s earlier remark about animals at Lamentation had piqued her interest, and she figured that maybe a little distant motion might draw the small creature out...

Yet nothing moved even after she’d moved back. Dissatisfied, M.C frowned. She was _certain_ that there was something tiny there. She felt that pair of eyes somewhere in the flowers—

_Oh_.

It was then that the lantern light just hit the patch of lavender at the back, and it was there that she saw the eyes in question: cavernous, gaping, and hollow… _sockets_. A broken, gaping place where the nose should’ve been, shining worms feeling their way outwards—it was a skull, alright, but not just any skull: a _human's_ —

Choking down a shriek, she backed away, biting down into her lip to ensure her own silence. It was mainly inside the vegetable garden that she was to remain 'as silent as humanly possible', but she feared disrupting the peace even before her destination, for Lamentation’s grounds weren’t hospitable ones...

Unfortunately for her, something about her fear soon attracted the attention of a small murder of crows, who cawed to each other before flapping after her as she walked.  After it became clear they had no malevolent intent, however, she almost laughed at their presence, watching them alight on trees and fly after her out of the corner of her eye. Surely even glowing-eyed crows she could handle—in fact, as the most normal things out there, the birds' company was reassuring. 

All the same, Lamentation still managed to set both her imagination and sense of perception on edge: every once in a while, M.C thought she saw a second shadow’s head bobbing by lantern light; and for every swell of green that reminded her of pretty human arboretums, she would suddenly see some statue of, say, a widow pitiably pressing hands to her bosom that she'd already seen beneath a weeping willow a few minutes back… 

Skin crawling, she all but ran once she saw the vegetable garden, stopping just before its rusty gate when she noticed signs to the side. A freshly added, cheap-looking sign said 'Vegetables' in English, while below it was... a hasty note in such terrible handwriting that she couldn’t understand its message at all. Shrugging, she spared a glance at the assorted baskets lined up beneath the fence before grabbing an empty one without a cover. Lucifer's recipe didn’t call for too many, and the peppers were to be no larger than one of her palms, so how hard could it be to gather them?

Cringing at the grime that soiled her hands after pushing open the gate, she entered slowly, taking note of how well-oiled the hinges on the gate seemed to be. It seemed that the need for silence was a serious one indeed, if even the creak of iron was not to be had—why, even the crows remained silent here, just following her with their golden eyes from their sentry points on the garden fence... it was eerie, honestly. Still, sh e tried not to let it get to her as she moved through the garden. 

It seemed like an endless journey to the grave peppers. For a delineated area that barely occupied a space on the massive property, Lamentation's vegetable garden seemed somewhat…endless as she crept along. It felt almost as if she were on some sort of slow treadmill—though perhaps that was just because she kept stopping to glance around at the sky, or a moan from the southern trees down yonder. 

At last, however, she arrived in the back area, a leafy, thorny place full of wicked vegetables that her knowledge of human produce found no comparisons for. From where she stood, she could see grave peppers to her left, next to some oddly humming, sighing plants. By the blue light of her lantern she could see that her targets looked just as they had in the images tab of Ghoul-Go, resembling chill peppers but for their coloring, which was black intermingled with streaks of pale, gritty ash... actual ash, at that.

Ignoring the crows flying overhead, she set her lantern down in the soil at a crooked angle, wondering whether she shouldn’t have gotten gardening gloves as she went for the largest pepper within reach. After reading through gardening wikis on the Devilnet, she had figured out that most everything online was geared towards informing demons rather than humans or angels, whose safety was often a forgotten by-note. She didn’t want to risk anything by using bare hands, but—

A crow’s caw made her cringe and pull off the first grave pepper with an ungentle snap, unsettling the bush, and prompting the pluming, sighing plants nearby to groan. Spooked, she sucked in a breath and hoped that those crows, who had landed on a fence’s spire nearby, would leave bickering over their shiny bit of string for some other time. Silence was the rule this round, and she really, _really_ didn’t need a Bad Ending this early in the game...

She began again soon enough, working more swiftly this time in her desire to return indoors—and her unease about the crows, which seemed to be having an argument about their shiny point of contention. Plucking the peppers was easy, despite having to count to thirteen between each pepper, which apparently helped prevented spontaneous disintegration. Two peppers… three peppers… four, five…

_CAW_ , insisted a voice, and suddenly the whole murder of crows began to shriek in unison as the angry pair flew at each other in a flurry of claws and feathers. She ducked her head down and tried to focus on her task with shaking fingers—surely she could manage to pick the remainder even with some stupid corvine antics. There, six! Alright, waiting period was now one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—

Suddenly she heard loud, agonized whimpers coming from beside the chili bushes: the nearest plants' wide leaves had begun visibly quaking. She swivelled her head round to see the crows still fighting—grabbed her lantern and sprang to her feet to look down on the shaking plants, only to see that they were jerking upwards as if trying to uproot themselves—backed away a few paces when even the crows went quiet, one of the fighting two flying away. If the plants were harvesting themselves, then _she_ was being rooted to the spot, horror hammering through her heart as she heard a single _wail_ issue from the patch.

And that horror only grew as her lantern's light shone back on the things, for now she could see their finger-like roots struggling outwards, and that each individual plant was attached to some sort of large tuber—and that upon those tubers, grimy and gnarled, were faces— _babies'_ faces.... crudely hacked out lips and button noses and glowing eyes small as coins, twisted mockeries of human infants that never should've been...

And from those those mockeries sounded eerie shrieks like screeching tires and scraping gravel. Paralyzed, she held her lantern ever tighter, for she didn't know what to do besides _listen_ , watching as they seemed to notice her and turn—

The wind picked up suddenly, the air whipping as some force landed with a heavy thump next to her. The thick, muscular body towering over her scared the young woman, but she hadn’t time to say anything before she was abruptly hoisted into the demon's arms, dirt-flecked hands and lantern and all. 

“Mandrakes are dangerous to humans,” said Beelzebub simply. “So hold on.”

She practically clawed at him with her free hand (she didn’t dare drop the lantern, for even frightened she had a mind for avoiding Lucifer’s ire), holding on tightly as the demon sprinted forwards before vaulting them over the fence in the back.

Behind them, the mandrakes had begun to crawl past the grave peppers, baby fingers twitching.

*******

“You couldn’t read Mammon’s handwriting… of course. No wonder you didn’t even take the earmuffs from the first basket… ” 

  
“Did he not want to invest in a printed sign?” M.C sighed as Beelzebub set her down inside the kitchen and begin rummaging through a cabinet Mammon had sloppily tagged with a paper sign shouting, ‘MEDICINE + SHIT’.

The redhead surprised her with a crooked smile surprisingly warm for the slight thing that it was. “You’re picking up on things pretty fast. Yeah, that sounds about right. He probably thought it was a better use of money to buy that skin Levi’s been wanting in World of Conquests—for his own avatar, of course.”

“A wise investment.”

“Hah, yeah. Okay, enough talking.” Beelzebub pulled out a shimmery box that looked to be some sort of bespoke, unusually pretty medical kit, laying it on a counter and unsealing it. He was quick to pull out an old-fashioned vial which he uncorked with a strong thumb and a quick pop. “Take this antidote and swallow everything right away—it counteracts mandrake screech effects. It's okay, it's from the Celestial Realm. Should taste good.”

She eyed the Avatar of Gluttony, but remembered the soldierly way he seemed to defer to Lucifer and tipped the vial’s eggshell blue contents past her lips.

Beelzebub looked expectantly at her as she swallowed. She met his eye steadily enough until the antidote starting settling and tingling somewhere in her stomach, at which point she sighed, handed back the used vial, and looked resolutely away. “Okay, I think it’s working.”

For a moment she was only answered by the sounds of motion indicating that he was putting away the medicine kit, but then he spoke again: “The taste doesn’t affect you?”  
  
“Mm? Of course, I feel it in my stomach,” she replied.  
  
Mildly intrigued now, she looked back at him, but couldn't read his expression.

  
“Hmm,” Beelzebub said, most inscrutably.

The demon’s strangely familiar purple orbs lingered on her a trace longer than she liked, and so she averted her gaze to a pair of metal claws clutching a block of napkins, pinching one from the stack and using it to wipe some dirt off her hands. When she looked back, she found Beelzebub thoughtfully gazing at the refrigerator in that meaningful, devious way one usually reserved for prized co-conspirators… which, in this case, she supposed the refrigerator rather was. 

  
(She was fairly sure that she had passed a muttering armchair at the RAD library the other day, and sincerely hoped that the refrigerator possessed no such sentience—she hated to think what horrors might’ve been visited upon it by the Avatar of Gluttony.)  
  
Anyway, the important thing was Beelzebub was withholding something, and despite herself, she just had to ask. “What did I consume, by the way?”

“What did—oh, right, I didn’t mention that, sorry. Cherub’s Lullaby,” Beelzebub said, casually striding towards the fridge, where she noticed—of all things!—a large array of golden magnets shaped like the the Latin alphabet, most of which were arranged in misspelt, highly threatening exchanges between Levi and Mammon (the one that struck her the most was ‘ _dubl dik freak go suk frog tts_ ’…)

“Is… is that a herb? Or a generic drug name?” She asked, cautiously.

“The actual thing.”

  
Her eyes widened. “How… how do you bottle—okay, so wait, it counteracts the cries?”

  
“Yeah, the mandrake cries you heard. Even the start of their tantrums… you were told to be quiet because they’re finicky this year. They don’t harvest right when they’re disturbed prematurely.”  
  
“But then how do you deal with wild animals?“  
  
“Wild animals deal with themselves,” said Beelzebulb calmly, one hand holding a jar he’d grabbed out of the fridge, and the other absently searching for some letter to tack onto the “BELPHI” he was building. “The birds around here also know to keep quiet, though this time the crows got stupid again… but their leader did fetch me to help you, so that’s good, I guess.” The demon glanced back at the human. “Do you see any ‘E’’s around? “

She came in to pluck an ‘E’ off the frame around Asmodeus' budoir photo formed by repetition of the word ‘ME', and handed it to Beelzebub.

  
“Ah, yeah. Read my mind.” 

The red-haired demon smiled at her, and she almost smiled back as he pressed the ‘E’ onto the dark fridge, mind already distracted by budding theories about angel songs and conspiracies involving crows.  


“Can I say something, though?” Beelzebub asked suddenly. “It’s been on my mind since I first saw you, actually…”

“I suppose the kitchen _is_ the safest place for me to tell you anything,” M.C said dryly.

She could’ve sworn there was a darker glimmer of some _thing_ in Beelzebub’s face—like a smirk, though not on the lips nor in the eyes, but a shift in his handsome features nonetheless—yet he was so relaxed and casual that she wondered whether she was just imagining things for suspicion’s sake. “I guess you could say that. You probably wouldn’t like me when I’m really hungry. Well, anyway, you just… smell differently to other humans.”  
  
The human stared at the demon.  
  
“Would you… care to elaborate on that?” she asked very cautiously.

“Ah, sure. Well, you don’t smell right to me—different from Solomon,of course. But I think your soul definitely… hmm. Maybe this is a little too much for a casual conversation,” he looked somewhat apologetically at her. “I think I’m just a bit hungry after the garden, actually.”

Inwardly she was relieved to drop the subject of smells and souls, but outwardly she played along. “Ah, that’s okay. What’s there to eat today, then?”

“Let me show you,” Beelzebub grinned, uncapping the murky jar he’d been holding onto.

******

Pungent smoke intermingled with the scent of bloody iron and Devildom flowers strained the deep night air as M.C and her two supervising demons opened the door to the Apothecary Apocalyptica.

“You two have fun,” grumbled Mammon, avoiding M.C’s gaze in the same way he had been ever since Lucifer’s closed-door scolding for failing to supervise her jaunt through the vegetable garden. “I got smokes to buy… an’ Lucifer’s really wanting me to get me that stupid blend he likes.”  
  
“The cigarettes they ‘move around’ a lot, right?” Levi snorted. “After all these centuries, I keep telling you—"  
  
Mammon’s hand flapped dismissively as he walked away, not bothering to hear the rest of Leviathan’s charitable explanations about how the local demon pharmacy’s supply of dragonclaw cigarettes worked.

“Jerk,” muttered Leviathan, his orange eyes flaring. “Hmph… bet that scumbag’s going to steal those dragonclaws and get us all into trouble. Doesn’t even have that weird card waifu of his anymore…”

Leaving Leviathan to mutter to himself, M.C moved forward a few paces to get a better look at the place. The Apothecary Apocalyptica was three-quarters modern pharmacy and one quarter gothic discotheque, black and grey replacing humanity’s clinical whiteness and ceiling light fixtures traded out for slowly rotated, skull-shaped disco-balls hanging from the walls. Dark music that was moderately loud, and not relaxing at all, hummed throughout the neat isles—quite literally so, in fact; she could feel the whole room seem to shift as the songs swelled. Behind the sales counters were shelves lined with potions of various colourful sorts, and to the right, there was a door opened to some storage room in which she could see cauldrons simmering away.

Disoriented by the fumes leaking from that storage room and into the pharmacy, M.C shook her head to clear her head—it was all a bit much. The pulsing darkness, too, was dizzying, and although there were helpful signs everywhere, the decor made her wonder how customers managed to find what they were looking for.

“Demons can see in the dark, right?”

  
  
Leviathan, who was checking out a box of ‘Fuzzy Thoughts Pills’ on markdown, glanced over at her pityingly.

  
“RAD really needs to start Biology classes for you, normie. I’m not sure why they haven’t yet, actually—”

“Stanning different series doesn’t make me a normie,” she lectured boredly, though wasn’t interested in arguments as much as the contents of those ‘Fuzzy Thoughts Pills’, which she peered at eagerly until she saw they were marked ‘ _not recommended for human consumption_ ’. Pouting, she put back the cloud-adorned box she’d been holding and sighed.

  
Leviathan smirked at her as he dropped a few into the basket he’d been handed by a bored assistant demon. “Have you thought about what I said that one night?”  


  
“Umm, you mean…” she tried to remember Leviathan's most recent bestowal of wisdom. “How to collect spirits on the Fire Road in Mononoke Island, for when I finally make my account? So that I can trade some over to you?”

  
  
The otaku groaned as he steered them both into the ‘Happy Warm Supplements Isle—For Angels & Humans!’. “For the sixth time, it’s Mononoke LAND. Why are humans’ memories leakier than the super sieves from the Cooking Papa app? But okay, you’re half right. And no, it’s not about that…”

  
  
“Was it about the fourth chapter's analysis? Because if it’s about that, I sent that over this morning.” In the spirit of maintaining good relations, she'd suggested that they exchange words over TSL. The dinner table had collectively snorted when the other brothers had overheard their discussion of the emails, but honestly, the literature lover and writer in her didn't mind: TSL had its charms, and Leviathan wasn't so annoying whenever he was thoughtfully addressing interpretations she'd thought of that he hadn't.

“I saw! But no, it's not about that. It’s about my best early piece of advice to you,” Leviathan replied impatiently before dropping his voice to a low murmur as he cornered her against a freezer section. “Mammon, remember?”

Her eyes widened. “I don’t think we ought to discuss that here, but yes, I've been looking into it.”

  
“And?”

  
“Research is going well.”

Orange eyes glinted conspiratorially.

  
“Do you think you can pull it off?”

  
She stared at the archdemon for a very long second. _Think about it_ , Leviathan had wheedled, his orange eyes sparking as their conversation had wrapped up during that first meeting. _A pact with my brother wouldn’t just help me get Seraphina back—it’d make your life a lot easier here, and you’d be a lot more powerful and protected…_

(Then Mammon’s words, _‘Humans who don’t have magic are easy prey for demons, you know?’_ had played in her mind as if on cue, and she’d left Leviathan’s room with heavily annotated copies of TSL and a sinking feeling in her stomach.)

_Could_ she make a pact with a demon? Perhaps, Solomon had said. And perhaps, if she were to demonstrate sufficient interest in and understanding of the reading materials he had given her, he would introduce her to a witch he knew, and they’d see about bringing out any hidden powers…many things would be within reach then…

But she soured slightly as she stared down the otaku and remembered the reason she’d started thinking about pacts in the first place: Leviathan himself. As you couldn’t please everyone, she wanted to get along with _most_ of the brothers, but Leviathan…wasn’t doing favours for himself, here. Mammon was a thieving jerk, but she wasn’t happy about Leviathan’s pettiness and attempts at manipulating her… was that Seraphina collectable really worth getting her involved like this?

  
(Yeah, probably, she answered herself, sourly. What was a chip off a human’s soul to the chip on a demon’s shoulder, after all?)

  
M.C exhaled, tried not to take Leviathan’s superficial interests to heart, and raised her brows instead, playing along with the whole atmosphere his words and excitement lent themselves to. “If I play my cards right,” she whispered theatrically.  
  


If Leviathan had had a tail, it would’ve swished then. “Understood. You’ve done well, human.”  
  


“I only did as you desired, oh Endarkened One, Lord of Shadow mine,” she said, with a little bow.

His eyes widened for a split second, then his cheeks puffed out.

“I-I’m not into that kind of stuff, normie, get a grip,” Leviathan said in a reproachful huff.

  
  
She couldn’t help but smirk slightly, somewhat forgetting her displeasure with him. “Huh, really? That’s a shame. I’m always up for some good live action RP,” she teased as the demon shifted his gaze away and stuttered something in Japanese. Pink lips twitching slightly, M.C twisted away to open a freezer door and lift out a box of rocket-shaped popsicles advertised as ‘Sun Pops: Human Favorites Blend (Now With Improved Effectiveness For SAD!)’. “Have you ever tried these before?”  


  
Leviathan answered in an especially awkward rush: “Nope, the lollipop versions are better—hey, close the fridge! The cold will spread. Oh, but if you’re buying those for yourself then get an extra box—Beel will eat it if you don’t. Okay, I’m going over there to get some stuff.”

  
She did as he suggested, then idly checked out a few other products, noting a few that might come in handy later. 

In a few minutes she walked over to where Leviathan was now looking through a barrel for just what he had mentioned earlier. Inside the container were sealed cannisters bearing cutesy pictures of the lollipop version of Sun Pops, whose tie-dye candy was in the shapes of bats, moons, stars, and hearts. Honestly, they wouldn’t have looked out of place in a kindergartener’s lunchbox.

“Do you buy these often?”

  
“Yeah, they keep you warm,” said the demon absently, tossing canisters into his basket. Then he started as he realised what she’d asked. “Huh? Oh, yeah, I mean, yeah, I do.” He sounded like he was flushing, but in the darkness she couldn’t really tell. “N-not that I need them or anything! I-I just like the taste.”

A soft coo from Karasu had her fishing out her D.D.D to check out the message preview flickering onto the lockscreen.  


  
> **LORD DIAVOLO:** Hello, M.C! I hope you’ve been doing well. I’ve been thinking… 

“Hey,” said Leviathan, sounding slightly annoyed. “Who’s that? Is it Mammon?”

“No, it’s the mothership asking what time to beam me home.”

(She wondered for a moment whether anyone missed her—then quickly rejected that idea: her dog, father, and godfather were all missing from her life now…)

Leviathan reached out to intrusively tap a purple nail on her screen, making Karasu caw and cover up the message with his little wings.“Lord Diavolo’s been messaging you?” The demon of Envy scowled as he accidentally hit the password ask and got an upset Karasu sternly holding a 'Get Out' sign in one claw.

She considered the Avatar for a moment, then lowered her voice as if to confess a crime. “Yes. This time I believe it’s about the human breeding project he wishes to personally oversee, you see…”

  
Leviathan looked at her deadpan expression. “Human…breeding…”  
  
When he jerked away from her, looking pointedly away, she knew she was victorious; inwardly she smirked a little, feeling pettily better about his treatment of her. 

“You’re worse than Asmo,” Leviathan whined, starting to walk out of the aisle.

She hummed and pocketed her D.D.D after glancing at a follow-up text preview from Asmodeus, who was bugging her about starting a Devilgram, then fell in step alongside the demon. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, Leviathan, but I do believe the _hentai_ would be you for thinking it. Objective scientific research does exist, you know?”

She shut up as the demon glowered at her a bit scarily.  
  
“Save the banter for Mammon, human."  
  
“But it’s better with you,” she tried to say appeasingly, though not untruthfully.

She got no response in return to that—unless you counted the tall, lanky demon’s pace abruptly picking up as one—but Leviathan did later pay for her goods ‘in order to avoid waiting longer’ and say she could return the favour by buying him virtual currency, which was… something…

Demons, honestly.

* * *

**A/N II:** To be continued. It got a little long, so I saved some of what I intended to do for following chapters. And I'll just say to expect Belphie and a few other weird things... :]]]


	6. your fever dream, can't you see it getting closer

**A/N:** RL has been very stressful, as has my illness, so I do apologize for the wait! However, this is much longer and involved than previous chapters, so I hope it will compensate for the wait period somewhat. Lucifer is back, too, and—well, you'll see. ;D 

Thank you to everyone who has supported me in any way thus far! And reviewers, please know that your reviews are greatly appreciated even if I haven't managed to reply to them—I re-read them all the time. No matter how brief they are, your messages always make me truly happy, and I love knowing what you enjoyed or picked up on. Thank you so much for your time and kind thoughts. <333 

I'd also like to give an extra thank you to some amazing, supportive friends who recently inspired me while I was chipping away at this chapter—thank you to Cactus, Iana, and Thal! Although we weren't necessarily talking about this fic or this chapter when we were chatting, I somehow struck on some very cool plot ideas during our conversations. ;)

Also, just some extra things:

1) If anyone wants to ever get in touch and giggle about OM, please do check out my twitter (link in profile)! I love making new friends and interacting there. <3

2) Expect more Belphie from here on out... and Solomon... and Sitri... and some Other Humans... and many more people! Also, M.C learning how to cook (big yikes).

3) I'll be updating the A/Ns from previous chapters for references, etc.

* * *

_“Son, the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world there was only one of him.”_

― David Wong, _John Dies At The End_

* * *

**AUGUST, WEEK THREE**

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:** Hello, MC! I hope you’ve been doing well. I’ve been thinking that it might be a good idea to get to know each other a bit better.

>>> **M.C:** Hello, Lord Diavolo. Thank you for the message. I’m doing fine. I hope you’re doing alright as well?

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:** Oh, you finally replied! 

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:**

****

>>> **M.C:** I was out with Mammon and Leviathan. I do apologize.

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:** Oh, I understand. Focusing on company at hand is very important.

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:** I’m glad you think that way, too.

**> >> LORD DIAVOLO:**

**> >> LORD DIAVOLO:** Would you be interested in coming up to the castle sometime in the next month? I’d like to hear about your experiences at RAD so far!

>>> **M.C:** I could do that.

>>> **LORD DIAVOLO:** Great, I’ll get Lucifer to arrange something! I’m looking forward to it already!

*****

  
Cold stung her hand as she groped past toppled piles of frozen foods, trying to find a good space in the back of the fridge where she might hide her box of heliotherapic, mood-enhancing Sun Pops from Beelzebub. After trying one cherry popsicle fifteen minutes ago, her sweet tooth had been so happy that she’d decided to take a preemptive strike; a few baubles she could handle Mammon swiping, but snack-stealing was a crime _most_ incomparable, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that the Avatar of Gluttony would devour even earmarked desserts.

  
Beelzebub wouldn't ever get hers, though. Her snacks were _hers_. The demon brothers could eat her flesh and pick their teeth with her bones, but they'd never get her soul, and certainly not her damned desserts… speaking of which, perhaps a good place would behind that—wait, gods, she had no idea what strange creature that raw hind leg was from, but the limb was still bloody in its clear wrapping and had twitched violently just now, so she wasn’t about to ask—

  
Aha. Niche discovered. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. She’d even the scores with those demons yet, she thought gloatingly, giving the box of popsicles a little shove inwards.

Wait, was that solid ice at the back? 

*****

Using her foot to push aside the purple pharmacy bag full of human vitamins she’d gotten in addition to the Sun Pops, M.C finally set down the block of ice she had struggled to smuggle upstairs down on the floor, and wiped her benumbed, wetted hands on her uniform skirt. After heating up her fingers with a few rubs, she went over to set her D.D.D in its holder before circling back to stare at the credit card someone had quite literally frozen.

  
“This can only be Mammon’s card,” she breathed, voicing the realisation that had been running through her mind as she had snuck around a brotherly squabble on the way back to her chambers, which were fortunately close by the kitchens. “But this—the execution is amazingly thorough. How long did a person have to wait…for… oh, wait. I’ll bet Lucifer did this to punish him.”

(Frozen credit card… was that a dad joke made literal? Kind of endearing, if so—though could there really be a chaotic gremlin side to someone as regal as Lucifer? Perhaps it was just an ironic bit of sadistic punishment being carried out… either way, color her impressed.)

<If it’s really that rude Mr. Mammon's, then it’s a most clever move taking this back into our room! You’re the most cunning human I’ve ever known, Master!> Karasu cooed from the D.D.D holder, his tiny image faintly bouncing across the darkened screen.

“… I’m the only human you’ve ever known,” she pointed out, poking a finger at the thick hunk of ice wetting a stain into the antique carpet stretching across the floor.

<Well, there was one of my beta testers, but one day he stretched his neck too far and he didn’t talk much afterwards,> peeped the digital demon cheerfully.

“Er, right. Okay, I’ll take it. My cunning is knife edge, you’re right.”

<It could swiftly sever even the sturdiest of spinal cords!> Karasu crowed proudly. <So what will you do now, Master? Will you be keeping it?> The digital demon asked hopefully as the girl rubbed at her tired arms before kneeling on the rug to peer through the ice’s glaze at the card holder’s details.

“As leverage, of course,” she muttered, then blinked at herself. She might’ve been at some close proximity to hell, but she hadn’t expected the rot in her soul to come out _this_ early in… or was it that she had always thought like a demon, as Solomon had said?

(the thought made her contemplative, but it didn’t entirely surprise her—not when she was used to feeling imperfection’s bite at what good qualities past loved ones had claimed to see in her.)

Whatever it was, she knew it was a good thing she had taken the card: it made her feel just a bit safer, knowing that she could always hand it over to the Avatar of Greed and have him indebted to her, even if only by a negative bank balance (…or so Leviathan’s gossip claimed—it wouldn’t surprise her if Mammon had some back up oil wells he wasn’t talking about). 

  
“I mean… it won’t hurt to hold onto this before returning it.”

A knock on the door startled her out of her contemplations; skittering and spidering, she grabbed a handful of clothes she hadn’t folded yet and strew them about in a strategic manner so that some covered the block of ice and others draped messily over furniture. That done, she hesitated for just a minute before cracking the door open a bit to see which demon brother was visiting her now. 

As if in a poor twist of dramatic irony, the demon awaiting her was none other than Mammon. She inwardly grimaced at his timing, but outwardly merely nodded at him. He gave her no real reply; running a golden, singularly shiny coin between his deep tan, white-nailed fingers, he didn't look that content today, seemingly more tired than usual.

“Lucifer wants ta see ya in twenty,” the demon informed her with a wide, barely covered yawn. “That time of week.”

“Oh,” she said, staring at the coin being flipped expertly through the air. “Yes. But why are you coming to tell me? Thank you, I mean, but—"

“He didn’t want ta have ya forgettin’,” said Mammon cagily.

“Thanks for telling me,” she repeated, moving to close the door until she caught the demon’s pointed stare, at which point she tossed her own blank stare back. “Is there something else, Mammon?”

The archdemon gave a grunt, not quite meeting her gaze as the coin sailed higher. “Look, I’m gonna make sure ya get over there safe, is all. Okay?”

Her icy features thawed and cracked into a small frown. She didn't know whether to find Mammon’s newfound avoidance of her a relief or a burden, but if she were being honest with herself and not anyone else, then… yes, pathetically, it was the latter: a burden. She felt stupid and naive for thinking it, like one of those people projecting emotions onto pet rocks or planks of wood with faces drawn on, but... she almost thought she saw a touch of guilt to Mammon’s daily rough handling of her, now. Mandrakes were supposedly fatal to humans, and had Mammon taken some more care in his signage, then she would’ve run less risk of dying to Lamentation’s crop, so… could he, a demon, have felt some guilt over such a mistake…?

Still, she didn’t like the idea of bodyguarding to excess. Yes, fine, a pretty boy following her around had once been the stuff of anime-inspired daydreams, but in reality it was bothering her a fair bit (not least because of how it looked to outsiders). She’d always been fine with receiving help (...mostly), but this kind of offer was making her feel like some rare breed of flightless insect everyone was desperate to conserve. “I’m safe indoors, though—“

“Don’t look a gift pegasus in the mouth, human. The Great Mammon is doin’ you another favour, alright?” Mammon’s white brows furrowed at her. “By the way, Lucifer’s probably gonna say at some point that you’re supposed ta work the garden with one of us from now on… I'm just letting ya know, don’t fight it. I don’t know why you wanted to help so bad but it was real stupid an—”

  
“I wanted to help,” she blurted out, irritated and a little embarrassed. “Lucifer seems awfully busy, so I thought I could—“ her own white brows knit in mild frustration. “Never mind. It was stupid, I get it, okay? Also, your handwriting was hard for me to read, but,” (she was annoyed but fair enough to add a quick concession here), "maybe that's because humans don't have such great vision compared to demons.”

A nonplussed Mammon stared at her as if beholding a village idiot who had confessed to successfully hacking into the mainframe of a city bank.

“Why’d ya want to help, human? You’re even not on the schedule to start cooking yet… ain’t a rich girl supposed ta take it easy?”

Nervously she tucked some straying, fluffy curls of hair behind an ear, not liking how she found it hard to gauge Mammon's reaction… or that while she was mildly insulted, she was also mildly unnerved by the blueness of his piercing stare. “Of course it’s lovely being treated like a guest. But I’ve been there. I mean, not me—my dad. He worked his fingers raw all the time, working in the art studio until the late hours…. he'd forget to eat. I’d set timers to check on him since he'd just turn his own off and keep drawing…"

She sucked in a breath as gold-laced blue eyes scanned behind her. She had to keep him from coming in and looking around… besides that, she just felt like she had to explain herself.

“So, um… basically I thought I’d be more useful to the household… though in the end…”

  
The coin fell back into Mammon's palm, and then disappeared somewhere up his sleeve—though to where she couldn’t guess, for his sleight of hand was swift, and her thoughts suddenly noticed his nails instead. When had Mammon’s model manicure chipped, she wondered? Stained black? For someone so rowdy, the demon model seemed to keep his white nails effortlessly immaculate… what was it, what was it… the blackness…

  
White nails, slight black on them… Wait, wait—she’d noticed Mammon’s hands earlier that day while noting the brothers’ nail colours at lunch, and it hadn’t looked like dirt… and then, earlier, after Leviathan had caught her staring at anatomical renders near some horn growth supplements, the Avatar of Envy had linked her to a basic wiki about demon biology while in line at the cashier’s…. there had been a neat detail there, something she hadn’t expected at all, and it had everything to do with colors.

Black. Hadn’t it said that demon blood was black?

Oh. 

_Oh._ Her stomach curdled as possibility struck her. There was no getting around her own (very naive, very human) feelings of guilt the longer her logic turned around the question of Mammon’s closed-door punishment from Lucifer. She was coming to understand from written resources and word of mouth that demons, particularly the Sins, were strong, resilient creatures, but she wasn’t sure how large a power gap existed between the two eldest brothers, and while she still had precious little idea of what passed for punishment-worthy to a demon, she knew that demons calling another ‘sadist’ must’ve meant something.

Black…blood traces. In what manner had Lucifer punished Mammon for not ensuring her safety…?

  
“Ah… yes, in the end, that didn’t… didn’t go well,” she murmured, her composed speech and expression hiding her squirming heart.

Mammon snorted. “Abysmal penmanship, yeah,” said Mammon, clearly reciting someone else’s words (Lucifer’s?). “Yeah, I get it. My writing’s pretty shit even to other demons, it ain’t your eyes that set you wrong in the garden.” Though he seemingly wasn’t in a combative mood, he scowled defensively at her all the same. “If you want calligraphy or somethin’, though, that’s Satan’s business. I’m not gonna remake those signs for ya, human."

Something thrummed inside her then, and it took her a moment to decipher the rhythm resounding through her heart as empathy. Souls were born alone, yet language bridged the waters mid their lonely isles, those selves that otherwise could never know each other, and she saw a _self_ in what he said—a reflection of her own past. Vaguely she recalled Mom’s intentional comparisons of her to Angelica in order to ‘motivate’ her out of her slump after flunking out of college—did Mammon have anything like that in his life, she wondered?

Ah, it didn't matter. She did feel a little chastened, for on second thought, hadn’t she rushed in, with the garden? Couldn’t she have admitted defeat (something she hated doing with challenges, honestly), and gone to ask someone what the signs said…?

“I wasn’t going to ask you to rewrite any signs.”

  
Mammon eyed her, but let her go on. 

“After all, it’s a better… investment of time and money for me to get used to your writing.”

White brows lifted at her statement, but when Mammon didn’t say anything, and the seconds dragged on with him just standing there, she became nervous and tried again, thinking a bit of banter could help.

“Speaking of good investments, it’d probably be wise to save up for some really stellar Devildom body mod. Like, maybe I could trade in my eyeballs for a sharper set. And maybe save up for an extra pair to add to the back of my head so I can make up for the helpless human part… ‘constant vigilance’, you know?”

Mammon suddenly grinned at her, mischief dancing through the gold in his eyes and spinning it into light.

“‘ _Constant vigilance_ ’, huh? Was that a Harrison Porter quote? You’re a real nerd, human.”

“Aren’t you also one for knowing the reference, then?”

Mammon blinked, then scowled, crossing his arms. “Hey, there was nothin’ better on in the movies! What’s a demon supposed ta do when they re-run it every single year?! Ya know how long they play popular human movies here for?”

“Go to the places with arthouse pictures?”

  
“Arthouse—ya mean Satan’s borin’ monochromes with shaky ass camerawork and Hollywood humans mumblin’ the same three lines the whole time? No thanks. My brain works great without that stuff.”

They both looked surprised to find that the giggle in response to his remark came from her, though the fingers sternly slapped over her mouth said the contrary.

Mammon looked pleased by her unexpectedly positive response, though, and he smirked mightily, stupidly handsome features all the more handsome for his stupid smugness. “Ya know I’m right…” The demon touched fingers to his lips in a funny gesture that seemed to be a tic of his. “The Great Mammon’s a _natural_ philosopher, what can I say! I don’t need fake philosophy crap when my head is full of the real thing. But enough chattin’, human, let’s get over ta Lucifer before it’s late and he gets so mad he starts moltin’ everywhere.”

  
Forgetting all about the hidden, defrosting credit card at the mention of Lucifer, she nodded and followed Mammon, only just remembering to circle back and lock her room before hurrying after her guardian demon again.

*****

Lucifer’s white-plumed quill worked swiftly away, inking sable pages with red loops and lines of Infernal runes as thin and markedly perfect as the umbels of spider lilies. M.C watched the eldest Sin work in fascination, not much caring that the demon was arrogantly working past the designated meeting time; there was an unearthly charm to the writing of Infernal characters, and a captivating elegance to Lucifer overall, that made watching the extension of his work rather… acceptable. The scratch of the quill’s nub, the slip of parchment over parchment, the focused expression on the archdemon's face—it was all oddly calming. Patience was a quality she could take on where it suited her, and with Lucifer sitting pretty, she felt like she could spend the rest of the evening just watching him go through papers, while getting these odd ASMR vibes...and perhaps some weird intrusive thoughts about glove sizes (there was much to be said for how nicely the Devildom's fashion industry managed one of its foremost clients’… assets...)

 _Yaoi hands_ , she realized, in a moment of descriptive brilliance—and was suddenly _very_ glad that she didn't narrate her thoughts aloud like a standard protagonist.

Mammon, on the other hand, was definitely not writing epic dedications to Lucifer in his head, and started huffing after about five minutes of waiting. He scowled at the dark-haired demon, and scowled hard, squinting his eyes as if he had just spotted the person responsible for letting the repo man park in the driveway. “Hey, Lucifer! We’re waiting over here, ya know? What happened to Mr. Proper an’ Punctual?”

The barest sigh stirred Lucifer’s shapely lips after Mammon’s annoyed outburst, but he gave no other indication of having heard the complaint besides adding another five minutes to the pair’s waiting time. The Avatar of Pride was so absorbed in his work that she was reminded of Caravaggio’s painting of St. Jerome working away at his Latin translation of the Bible; really, Lucifer was the very model of concentration (and there was even a human skull perched atop some thick folds of papers atop the desk).

Mammon soon realized that waiting was impossible with a D.D.D that wasn’t able to support the Creeper's Casino app he'd just downloaded (it seemed to have eaten half his battery before freezing the D.D.D into some freakish glitch mode). “Yo, Lucifer! How about ya do what we came here for. I got better things to do than babysit a—the human all the time.”

No response.

“Lucifer, c’mon, man…”

No response, again.

“Lucifer, c’mon,” Mammon’s grumble edged at a low whine. “I know we’ve gone around the globe three times now and you’re older than a sack of shit from the first dump of man an’ all, but your ears ain’t _that_ bad—“

The shift of paper stopped, the flipping and flicking finishing in such a way that the room fell unpleasantly silent. Lucifer had just deigned to snap his chin upwards, eyes flicking over M.C for a moment before sharpening over his brother, whom he bore into with a sadistically sweet smile. “Since you’re so bored, why don’t you get up and stretch your legs? I recommend walking in front of the fireplace. Perhaps do a handstand over there to warm up?”

Mammon was panicky all of a sudden. “UM. Howaboutawalkinstead, yeah, the room sure is big enough for a walk—?”

“On second thought,” said Lucifer silkily, rising from behind his desk to tower over the pair waiting before it, “you can go ahead and flip over right now."

M.C stared as Mammon groaned but obediently repositioned himself like a practiced acrobat, planting both palms onto the floor and balancing his legs in the air.

“Now go in front of the fireplace, stay out of our conversation, and practice The Father’s most beloved virtue of patience,” said Lucifer boredly. “M.C and I have something to discuss following the recharge of her ring’s AP.”

It took seconds for Mammon to obey, his inhuman grace replanting him in front of the fireplace whose element suddenly roared, its cozy natural warmth suddenly flaring out a few blue flames that leaped past the grate, striking just shy of Mammon’s body. The demon yelped as one particularly strange flame uncoiled from the fireplace and smacked down on the ground, not leaving any marks but for the sheer anxiety on Mammon’s face.

“AH, that’s hot—shit, sorry, sorry, Lucifer! Shit, why blue—“

Mammon avoided the next toss of flames by an impressive springing sort of move, though the flames still licked after him, his wrists—

  
M.C swallowed, watching the archdemon try to avoid the magical flames with a crawling, creeping sense of confusion and too many emotions to name. She wanted to look at Lucifer to see whether it was him controlling the flames somehow, but she found her eyes fixed on Mammon... 

She didn't know what to make of this. By human standards this wasn’t right, to put it lightly, but… she still… she didn't know what this was at all. 

  
(And she could only imagine what happened with punishments behind closed doors—)

But her heart was a mess about the almost comical, yet unsettling display: through it ran jolts of disgust towards Lucifer, but that same disdain was soon tapped on the shoulder by a small-minded smugness about how punishment was falling upon an arrogant knave who scoffed at her and never used her name…. and then that very pettiness was abruptly tortured by remembrance of how Mammon had looked at her when she’d cried outside RAD, their conversation from earlier, and—weirdly enough—the funny way he lit up about coins, or anything remotely suggestive of M-O-N-E-Y, anything remotely gaudy…

Gaudy, huh. Her mind drifted for a second as she stared at the demon, wondering about the things he'd stolen from her hitherto… for instance, was the Avatar of Greed keeping or selling that overpriced ring Mom had gifted her at The Cafe Centrale last Valentine’s? That flashy, heart-shaped one, the old gold Mom had slid over the table along with a dewy-eyed confession about ‘getting into M.C's head by taking a mental health quiz in Cosmopolite’… that stupid pity present accompanied by a breathy, ‘M.C was probably just too neurotic for most people, but no worries, mental health was a huge youth problem these days—she'd find someone who Got Her!’ The approving nod given by the cameraman she hadn’t noticed earlier, Mom holding up the ring for all the other customers to see, for dear Father in Heaven and Folks At Home to rate... ugh, but _no_ , what about that yellow lump had Mammon liked anyway? What a tasteless ass, liking those black diamonds which made it into a fat, absolute bumblebee of a trinket—

(But had Mammon kept that ring, she wondered? Did he have some motley nest of trophies he’d filched from fellow demons and lonely little trust fund babies? Did its sparkle make him happy still…?)

“Eyes up,” Mammon huffed, interrupting the swarm of thoughts that had blurred her perception of the present for a good long moment. “Yer staring, okay? I know I’m the best lookin’ one around here easy, but ya can always buy my extra spreads from the magazine stand in my room, y’know?”

Sweat did beat Mammon’s brow though as he shifted to accommodate for whipping blue flames.

Emotion welled up within the stoic human, making the stony-faced girl purse her lips. “Sir—Lucifer,” she said quietly, guilty heart wilder than her cool, controlled speech. “Does blood work in the same way for demons as it does humans?” 

Mammon grunted, his expression shifting to something more stoic.

Lucifer, for his part, replied to her question with a hum of consideration. “I should hope so,” the Avatar of Pride drawled, mouth just skirting a smirk as his eyes danced from Mammon’s suddenly unreadable expression over to hers. “A little increased blood flow to that area would only benefit poor Mammon's miry hemispheres…”

She shivered as claret orbs held her in their stare with a lupine amusement.

“Are you perhaps feeling sorry for him? That’s kind of you, but rest assured, I have every need to discipline my brother, and this is but a slap on the wrist.”

Mammon huffed as he danced fingers over the antique carpeting, avoiding the lick of flames just barely. “Ain’t deaf ya know! And I’ll have ya know my blood goes down right—“

“Down? Yes, I know. But we expect that from Asmodeus, not you,” sighed Lucifer, flicking his eyes from the girl’s and returning to seriousness with an ease that fascinated M.C. The tall archdemon circled back to resume his seat behind his desk. “M.C, if you would.”

Her lips flattened into a thin neutral line. She tried not to think about Mammon. Sympathy for the devil had to wait—she had business to attend to with his brother, first.

  
(Ah, how annoying, feeling disturbed by something that could be totally normal for these madmen… and feeling too much in general, how vulgar—!)

“Relax those shoulders, Lucifer’s not gonna roast you,” Mammon called over. “Eatin’ humans is banned right now, y’know? Wouldn’t make sense for him at all!”

“Oh,” she said, as she stepped towards where Lucifer was waiting behind his desk, soft voice curt and eyes studiously avoiding both pairs of pretty eyes. “I didn’t know _that_ , thank you, but I know Lucifer won’t. For one thing, _I_ know how to behave myself, and for another, I reputedly taste exceptionally bitter.”

Surprise cracked Mammon's stoic expression wide open, and he actually chuckled. “Bitte—huh, I knew it! Eating all those salads at RAD like a starvin’ sheep, ya definitely taste like lettuce—“

M.C almost smiled as Mammon’s crowed remark lightened the situation and her darkened heart, but ended up fiddling with her ponytail instead once she realized that Mammon was showing a fair bit of skin with his uniform top all...disturbed; looking away, she attempted to mentally compose herself.

What was going on with her, with them? What kind of emotions was she supposed to feel right now? Concern, fear, amusement, or--? _Demons_ , honestly...

“Seriously, how d’ya live off vege—crap, okay, Lucifer, I’m shuttin’ up, don’t turn them up! Geez… ” 

She finally came close enough to Lucifer that she noticed his expression, and any further impulses to giggle fled. Lucifer's expression…was not uncharitable. It was one she might’ve thought hinted at some mild intrigue, had she thought anything about her would’ve intrigued him—and amusement. Had she pleased him somehow? 

“Now that my brother is focusing on his physical fitness—M.C, your hand.”

She proffered it in a delicate outstretch. Larger fingers slipped over her own, the smooth material of their gloves brushing over her senses in an almost teasing way as Lucifer carefully removed the magic bauble from her finger. She didn’t ask why he didn't just let her remove it herself, as she wasn’t averse to contact with him, and as she figured it was a point of care on his part—perhaps he was worried she’d drop the ring?

“Good,” Lucifer said, holding the protective ring upwards, towards the light. After a moment’s scrutiny, he raised a careful fingertip to the band, a small black spark crackling out his index finger and zipping electric energy into the band. He kept at this for another few minutes, channeling his magic steadily into the beautifully wrought black band, which greedily absorbed the magic into the tiny red gems that flecked its span.

Silvery eyes watched in open amazement. Discreetly displayed though it was, Lucifer’s magic still awed her greatly. Was his black spell some infernal electricity, or something like sin made manifest? While devouring Solomon’s tome again the other night, she had discovered that each archdemon had a range of magical powers, but as the tome was evidently dedicated to beginning witches and wizards, it hadn’t said much else on the topic, leaving her with a wonder that now only grew at the sight of the Avatar of Pride using his magic. What kind of demon was Lucifer really? And did anyone besides his master Diavolo really know? 

“Are these rings standard issue protection for magicless mortals?”

The black flow of magic fizzled out. “No, Lord Diavolo specifically asked me to invent some protection for you,” Lucifer replied evenly. “The vast majority of humans dwelling in the Devildom continue to live here for two reasons: firstly, because they enjoy this Realm; and secondly, because they can protect themselves.”

The veiled barb didn’t escape her. Her pride winced, and her desire to determine whether she had any magic—or to somehow seize ahold of some—only grew stronger. “Oh. Thank you, then.”

  
“It's nothing,” Lucifer said indifferently, moving the ring back onto her slender finger in so swift a motion that it seemed like the jewellery had never departed her skin. “However, I do have a question…”

“Yes?”

“That brooch you’re wearing…”

She tensed. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“Hardly. I merely wish to ask why it is that you wear that one piece constantly—I believe that my filthy thief of a brother has made mention of you owning a fair amount of jewellery?”

Ignoring Mammon's mutters about ‘not bein’ filthy’, she eyed Lucifer warily, waiting for him to continue.

Soon enough he did. “Besides your attachment to it being something of a curiosity, the brooch itself is an interesting piece. Over the years I have either encountered or acquired a variety of ornaments, and I’m somewhat familiar with materials used to craft some. I noticed that your brooch was made of Devildom felt, which is considerably more luxurious than the human ‘counterpart’, so to speak. Note the smoother texture and sheen, for instance—it gives the brooch a decidedly more floral, natural aspect.”

She perked up with renewed interest, always happy to learn something new, and especially eager to know about something dear to her. _She_ owned something devil-made? “It was made using Devildom methods, then?”

Lucifer’s lips curved in a smirk. “If you would permit me to look at it more closely, I could guess at which ones exactly.”

“I see…” she said, reluctantly. “No, thank you…”

“Ah, is it a sentimental piece?”

“Rather,” she admitted, hating the ease with which Lucifer’s eyes drew the admission out of her. “My godfather gave it to me long ago.”

“I understand. In that case, you would likely object to me borrowing it for a few hours, I presume?”

  
“Yes,” the young woman said, a bit more sharply than she intended, causing Lucifer to raise one black brow.

“Pity.” The Avatar of Pride didn’t look terribly fussed about her refusal, but the interest picking up in his eyes seemed to leave, folding itself neatly back into his expression.

“Yeah, _pity_ ,” came a low mocking tone from the other demon in the room, before flames evidently caught up him and caused him to give a loud hiss of pain.

She winced, but dutifully ignored Mammon. “Ah,” she spoke again, more softly. “If you’d like to look at it for a minute or two now, I wouldn’t object.“

Lucifer looked over at her inscrutably. “Indeed? I do appreciate that, M.C. I shall take you up on your offer, then.”

Internally she groaned at her own softness, resolving to be harder next time. Stupid girl, she chided herself. Don’t you dare sway and misstep again just because the poster boy for fallen angels has your ovaries in a chokehold! Think about his loudmouthed, panting brother right over there—alright, not a helpful visual, either.

“For Infernals’ sake…” Mammon groaned. “Hurry up, human!”

“Hush,” said Lucifer, rising and drawing in closer to M.C before she could so much as blink.

The size difference between them felt starker than ever as the stately demon’s dark aura enveloped her whole, for the Avatar of Pride was discourteous, and didn’t deign to give genteel warnings prior to reaching out, merely bowing his ebony head and lowering long ivory fingers to the uniform bow sitting primly on her chest. The young woman froze up instantly, fear born of shock and awareness of her own helplessness taking her heart into an icy squeeze as Lucifer gave a hum of consideration, staring at the brooch… then she caught wind of his scent, and another sort of emotion loosened fear's hold and filled her pulse hotly, dancing it wildly through her heart as she tried to place that scent's charms. She didn't know what Lucifer smelled of other than a deep cologne, but she thought there might've been a fiery, smoky element to it, musk, some unknown spice….something refined yet heady, like too many sips of good vintage, or the chasmic beauty of his wine-dark eyes…

She didn’t know how long she stood there, but Lucifer didn’t see fit to engage with her as he carefully manipulated the poppy flower brooch. She was glad of that, though, for she felt her color rising to the point where coherence might’ve been a challenge for even her tongue.

“Ah…. interesting,” said Lucifer to himself, looking genuinely curious. 

The archdemon abruptly released the young woman, stepping back and leaving her breathlessly grateful for a sudden influx of air, which seemed to have left the room when he had loomed over her. 

“M.C, the next time we meet, I’d like to look at this brooch again.” There was no ‘if you don’t mind’; his words were a casual assumption of rights. “There is something about this ornament that reminds me of another I've seen before... I'd like to discuss this further, but I have limited time right now, and I can’t be too sure that I am correct in my current assessment.”

“Very well,” she said, just barely.

  
Nearby the coloured flames vanished, and Mammon finally flipped over, rubbing at his head and swearing to himself.

*****

She was dreaming inside a dream, asleep in the embrace of the shadow-veiled stranger. But despite feeling damp lilies being woven into her hair, and each press of the woman’s silken fingertips, that was not the real ‘self’ in her dream, for her true consciousness was projected in the manner of some errant spirit, wide awake and watching through blurry eyes as her own body lay in the lady’s lap, white and red hair mingling when the woman leaned forward to coldly kiss her cheek.

M.C stared at them for a moment, at her own self and the woman she had given up on knowing the name of. Naturally she didn’t care to look at herself too much, so she gazed at the woman mostly, admiring her as one might a work of art: free of her sunhat today, the dream guide’s red hair needed only starlight to gleam like a train of dewy, bloody roses, long hair creating a striking contrast to the blackness of her dress that night. She was faceless as always, of course—something about these dreams simply wouldn’t allow for her face to be revealed—but that in no way diminished her bronze-armed beauty.

How strange that any creature of her imagination would haunt her so kindly, M.C thought, staring at the pair, at Not-M.C and the black-dressed Woman In White. For a long time now she had had the most terrible periods of nightmares in between wonderful whiles of rest, but this woman had been there since childhood, always there to later soothe. She was one of the kindest being she knew even if she didn’t really exist at all.

And yet… she pursed her lips and stared hard at the pair, confused in her lucidity. And yet she had to wonder why, after all these years and many, many pitiful requests, her dream companion had at last decided to hug her.

 _Darling_ , said the woman softly, into Not-M.C’s ear. _I think we’re about to lose this game._

Glancing from the red lilies woven into her own body’s snowy waves to the woman, M.C stared for a moment, uncomprehendingly.

 _Please, please forgive me, M.C_. Honestly, I was just trying to help. _But I don’t think I’m strong enough to—_

 _Lils_ , came a shout from a voice she recognized, but couldn't place a name to due to dream sense's distortion. _Li—li—th…. You can come out now. I give up!_

As footsteps pounded the earth, her soft focus vision sharpened enough to give her a sense of where they were: some unearthly, beautiful part of a forest that looked more garden than wilderness. Splendidly adorned in pastel, shimmering flowers and soft orbs of light that wouldn’t have been out of place at some fairytale photoshoot, the place radiated beauty…and a distinct inhumanity. 

For a second she caught sight of a swirl-spiralled fortress or castle in the distance before the footsteps rounded an ancient tree, picking around its sprawling roots and bringing a familiar face into view: The Moon Man.

She froze, the fear beginning to flood her system suddenly roiling with a bitter, screeching, nauseating sense of betrayal as she realised that the Woman In White had disappeared, having fragmented into starlit particles as though she had never once been there…. 

_Why_ , she cried out, trying to merge into her other body by reaching out, but failing to do so.

(Why even in her dreams—how could _She_ do this—why why why _why_ —)

Despite not occupying a dream body, her distress somehow drew The Moon Man’s attention away from the space the woman had occupied, and towards her. _You_ , The Moon Man growled, looking back at Not-M.C’s fallen body, and then at M.C proper. Hollow purple eyes filled with a rage that flared them scarlet. _You’re not Lilith, you—!_

  
( _Wake up_ , said a voice, and she closed her eyes and yanked herself awake as hard as she could—)

 **BANG**.

"M.C, wake up!"

Feathery-lashed eyes flew open, and she knocked into marble as her knees caught along balusters, her hands just managing to flutter onto the parapet as pain jolted her nerves awake; giving a shuddering gasp, she greedily sucked air in through dry, slightly cracked lips, breathless as she had never been before. 

She felt… all wrong. She felt disoriented, out of sorts—just wrong. She felt so distinctly wrong that she didn’t know why on earth she would be out of bed.

What she could figure out from gazing blearily around at her surroundings was this: she was still in Lamentation, but standing in an unfamiliar, small space overlooking a winding staircase, whose upper steps were not far from her; the whole area was dark and terrifying despite the dim candelabras on the walls; and she had been transported here in her sleep somehow (talk about nasty recurring themes)…

Physically she was feeling wrong, too—for one thing, she was seeing little motes of light dance through her dizzied vision in a dreamy, painful sort of way, and she felt… absurdly drained. And her throat ached as though ungentle fingers had recently pressed to its cores and applied pressure; it burned inside and out as though it needed more than just a lozenge—like it needed ice, medicine. 

  
(And her mind—it felt as though someone had gotten up and jolted its frame askew—) 

“Look down, M.C,” the smooth voice wove back up again, coming down from far below.

Shuddering, she hesitantly acquiesced, and as her eyes began to clear up, she found herself gazing down at where a tall, shadowy figure stood, its green pair of eyes glinting like cats’ in the dark.

“Satan?” she rasped, trying not to wobble quite so much.

  
“Yes,” called the demon, coming into better view as he neared the one lamp weakly illuminating the pitch area surrounding the staircase leading up to the attic. “You sleepwalked up there.” 

She stared at the black lampshade raised by a twisted spinal cord too long and knotted to be human, then stared back at Satan, who wore an elegant jade dressing robe but was vaguely ruffled, as if he’d gotten up from sleep recently and hadn’t had time to brush his hair. The Avatar of Wrath's eyes had the demon race's eerie feline glow, but now there was something else in them as well—something that she could see even from up the stairs, a light edging on electric…

Wait, sleepwalked? “Were you watching me go up?” she asked, coughing.

  
“Yes, and only that because I can’t approach the stairs too closely… there’s a curse laid on them by Lucifer, and, frankly speaking, I’d rather not have my skin shredded off bit by bit for the next...while. And that's not even the whole curse. At any rate, I figured you’d wake up soon and could use a friendly face.”

“It might take me a few minutes to get down,” she said hoarsely. 

“I can wait,” said the Avatar of Wrath patiently. “Just answer me one thing, while you’re up there…”

Instantly she was wary. “Yes?”

“Can you approach the door behind you?”

Bracing herself with one hand on the marble, she half turned on a bare heel, just flinching as she became more aware of her body, and the worn floor’s roughness struck into her soles. “Alright, I…”

I don’t see any door, she wanted to say, for indeed she could find nothing but candelabras and gild decorating a sweep of dreamy blue moulded walls.

“There is no door,” she called back.

For a moment she heard nothing from Satan, and she wavered in the human-coloured firelight flickering over the oddly vacant space, but then she heard his pleasant voice stray upwards again, drawing out of the darkness like a dream.

“Never mind, then. Can you make it downstairs? If not, don’t worry and just jump over.”

She executed a weakened, clumsier spin on her heel to face the balustrade, clenching it with both hands now as she looked down at him, frowning. “Excuse me?”

“I’ll catch you,” called Satan’s voice.

  
Pretty pink lips twisted sourly, pride stiffening the human into a straighter stance as her snap of a reply echoed through the hall. “Is this for the human ammunition segment of some ballistics elective I don’t know about? Charming. Now count me out.”

The demon far below her gave a carrying laugh.

“I’m not here to be a test subject for your staircase theories, either.”

She didn’t have to have good vision to see how the electric green aura about Satan’s eyes sparked.

  
“Would you care to go down on your own, then? That’s fine if it’s what you desire. But you don’t look well, and I wouldn’t see a peer struggle unnecessarily.” The demon crossed his arms comfortably, surveilling her in a way that only fed into the feline similes and metaphors that nature itself had devised for him. “Also, even if you can climb up the stairs, some of the steps tend to shift and break in as you go down… that’s how it was even before Lucifer’s extra curses.”

  
(Was he lying? She didn’t want to find out the hard way….)

She breathed out, passing a hand over her face to hide the expression he apparently could see from even his position.

“Will you take a leap of faith, or will Ophelia forge her own path and tumble ever downwards?”

She narrowed her eyes at Satan’s Shakespearean reference, but shook her head to herself.

“I’ll jump,” she called back.

Because if she was going smash her spine while trying to end up in yet another demon’s arms, then at least she’d have the consolation of having died for art’s sake.

(and a better purpose for her life her mind’s most wasted wilds could not imagine—)

Recklessness and dreariness lending her strength, she grabbed fingers onto the railing and pulled herself upwards without much thinking for her attire or the landing at all. Perching on it as carefully as a sparrow landing on a telephone wire, she looked down at the demon, whose arms were raised upwards in an inviting, tempting gesture.

She tilted her head at him, freed hair falling over her shoulder in a soft waving sweep. “Will you name a sea after me if I dive too low?”

The demon’s smile shone at the nod to Aegeus. “Certainly, provided that your highness tells me it first.”

“Next lifetime, Isis.” She wasn’t one to freely give the source of her true power away… not that human names likely counted for much.

And then she closed her eyes, strained for strength again, and jumped. No dives, though, just a slight gathering of her skirts and light hop, because if she was going to do this, she wanted to do it right—look like the icon of beauty and grace Mom had always wanted her to be during those stupid, godforsaken pageants. 

(Grace and guts, such lovely, lovely human things—she barely bothered to focus on sensations as she tumbled downwards, merely thinking in hazy amusement, oh, Leviathan had mentioned Satan wrote some, so perhaps if she were to die nicely enough the Avatar of Wrath would be kind enough to write a footnote about her in this century’s memoirs—perhaps something akin to, ’there was a human transfer student foolish enough to—‘)

Foolish enough to—stop falling?

Some lightness suddenly tickled at the bend of her wrists and knees, ruffling the lacy trim of her pale pink nightgown and setting strands of hair afloat in butterfly strokes, and it took her a moment to realise that wind was gathering round and round her like a basket, yet she was not falling at all. She opened her eyes to find that she was suspended somewhere in the darkness, not far from the robed Satan and the dimly lit skeletal lamp.

Human and demon's eyes met as Satan’s hands, hypnotising her with the emerald glow glaring through their fingertips and running down to his wrists, lowered in the graceful manner of a man conducting an orchestra. M.C scarcely dared to breathe as the currents of air about her obeyed Satan’s silent commands like sentient instruments under delicate duress, playing her body to their tune. Bit by bit she was lowered, not a speck of skin harmed by the time her bare toes pressed to the ground, but her hair and heart were in flutters by the time her eyes locked with Satan’s.

When both she and the winds were released, the young woman spoke again. “Thank you, Satan,” she breathed, staring at his eyes, those azure-tinted, verdant orbs with their most peculiarly slanted pupils. She watched closely how the magic investing them with rings of spectral light began to fade.

The demon withdrew his fingers as the glow faded from them, slipping them halfway into the pockets of his robes. “Of course. Want me to walk you back to your room?”

  
“Yes, thanks.” She wasn’t in any mood to play at independence—frankly her joints were aching from all the acrobatics and all she wanted to do was go sleep until the next responsibility reared its annoying head.

  
At the very least, that was what her body wanted to do, for her mind was another story altogether. Questions gathered everywhere in her mind and made it prickle into a nervous thing humming and static, but alas, no conjectures could be fully dwelled upon while in Satan’s company. Sleep was going to be all the more difficult now that she’d seen what she had…or had not. From what shadows had those fingers strangling her come, and into which ones had that attic door withdrawn? And Satan's powers, were some of them… were some of them air-related…?

“You find yourself in trouble fairly often for someone just arrived,” Satan said as they walked together, the demon just looking over at her with a flicker of the eyes. 

“Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to damsel into distress while staying in the Devildom,” she admitted, then grumbled in displeasure as he chuckled. “I’m not King Solomon with his seventy-two, alright?” Wasn’t _her_ fault she hadn’t grown up with a talking black cat and two sassy witch aunties or something like that, she thought grumpily, before remembering her own plan to remedy that little problem.

(Ah, right, Solomon and his… seventy-two… how odd. Could he be… could he really be ‘that’ Solomon, whose image was perhaps like Lucifer’s, and distorted by human narratives…?)

A quiet laugh from Satan. “It’d be quite dull if most humans were like Solomon.”

“Ah,” she said, “there wouldn’t be any shiny souls to steal, right?”

A golden brow quirked at her quizzically, and she realised her blunder then. 

“I didn’t take you for a gossip, M.C.”

“Well, you know, souls are like stocks for you all, right? Maybe digital currency even?” she said, accompanying her silly remark with an airy wave.

Let him think she just wanted some banter. She didn’t need one of the Sins picking up on her reading about magic and soul theory.

Satan snorted, and inwardly she sighed in relief before glancing over to look at him and seeing the look in his eyes—a keener, alerter look that brightened the hue of the green already glinting through the gloom.

“Speaking of souls… I find it interesting that _you_ couldn’t see a door, M.C."

"Why?"

"Well, I can see one perfectly clearly when… suitably elevated.”

Shining eyes met silvery ones. Satan smiled; M.C swallowed. 

"I think it may have to do with the fact that you’re a human.”

“Probably,” she said, hastily. “That would—make sense…”

“Does it? I suppose so. Not being visible to humans, that is... forget Mammon, Lucifer's private belongings would certainly interest many a greedy human.”

The young woman's gaze darted about. What was she supposed to say in response to that—?

“That’s nice,” she tried mildly, in the same way she responded to her mother when Love Ewe began to babble about how sweet her latest twenty-something boytoy was. “Interesting magic for an interesting place.”

Lucifer’s belongings, though…? She hoped that this wasn’t her being approached about assisting yet another demon’s petty revenge. 

If it was, then she didn’t care to involve herself. Whenever she stepped out of her new lifestyle’s dance and remembered where she was, all of the brothers scared her on some primal level…. really, that was partly why she hadn’t interacted much with them outside the house group chat. And even then, she tried to stick to reacting to jokes in that particular place, and really she was only texting Leviathan… it was easy to forget what he was when they talked TSL and games… 

And Satan was no Leviathan, for with Satan, she was starting to recall his title more often—because she'd read enough about human serial killers to know that they usually seemed like very ordinary, very nice people, and a _demon_ called the Avatar of Wrath being so _perfectly_ lovely made Satan especially frightening to consider. She was charmed by him, but she also didn't want to wake up to a knife between her ribs. So, beyond RAD, no socializing.

Yet here she was, doing just that—becoming indebted to Satan, even.

M.C resisted the urge to look away, touching at her raw-feeling neck instead; unfortunately, the slight motion was followed by green attentive eyes like a blood droplet by a shark… Satan's smile didn't even flicker.

"Yes, I agree, it is interesting. It makes me want to know about the door, really," the archdemon said casually.

“You’d like to gain access to the attic?” she inferred quietly, ignoring how her neck began to sting more and her heart picked up its pace.

“Gain access…? It’s rather rude of you to assume that, M.C,” said Satan, an acidic sharpness suddenly biting through his pleasant tones. “All I want is to know about the door. I did say I like to keep an eye on developments of the household, right?”

They stopped in the darkness of the first floor, standing somewhere near a room whose use she couldn’t recall at the moment. “M.C… what I mean to say is that it must be fairly difficult being in your position, all alone and powerless in the Devildom,” Satan said, throwing her off balance with his voice's sudden return to smoothness. “It may be a little forward to say this, but I think we have enough in common that we could become good friends with time.”

“It would be nice to talk more,” she said guardedly. “You are very insightful and…level-headed.” Would an honest compliment be enough to shut Satan’s smooth-talking ass up?

Evidently not. “Hah, thank you. But you did mention in class that you're fond of analysis and thought-provoking films and literature, correct? I am, as well. So I think we’d have a lot to talk about. Besides that, there’s always the small talk about cultural differences, and all sorts of magical theories…” There was a genuine eagerness to Satan’s trailing reply that disarmed her enough for her replying nod to be a genuinely eager one as well.

“Speaking of theories, would you care to help me test that ‘door theory’?” Satan's strange demonic accent and sophisticated elocution, similar to Lucifer’s, gave his English a melodic quality that would’ve made her relax had she not been paying attention to what he said.

She grew cold as he stared at her expectantly. So this was what he’d wanted. Satan… Satan was offering… no, Satan had given her aid, and was now expecting hers in return? 

Whatever the archdemon wanted, she knew one thing: she was in no position to refuse. Not after him having saved her, and not even before that. 

(she hated her powerlessness so much—if only she could hurry Solomon up with that ‘phoning a witch friend’ bit—)

M.C sighed, pretending that defying the sadistic Lucifer was just a drag, not a nightmarish concept. Lucifer hadn’t mentioned the stairs or attic to her (maybe because she obediently stuck to her room), but the fact that Satan, who according to Leviathan hated Lucifer, wanted to sniff around where Lucifer’s belongings were… did not bode well. “Alright, but I don’t want to get into trouble.” 

“I don’t want you to, either,” Satan reassured her as they came to stand before her room's door.

She frowned, then blurted out: “Sure, but—the idea—besides, what would I get out of help—“ 

Satan’s eyes flashed warningly, and M.C shut up and jerked her gaze away, not finishing her sentence as she glanced at him through the corner of her gaze. He had stopped smiling a minute ago, and now wore a look that could rival her own resting bitch face. His too-green eyes pricked at her, and it made her skin crawl. Don’t get ahead of yourself, human, his eyes seemed to say, lighting up the back of her neck like so many needles, and she wondered what she’d done to wind up sleepwalking into this _situation_. 

(Gods, she’d really gone the bargaining with the devil route and outright failed the checkpoint inventory test...)

  
Satan was watching her closely again. He held open her bedroom's door, his gentlemanly ease making her shiver.

“Okay, fine. Text me about it, then,” she whispered as she drifted forward, not wanting to look at him directly for fear of finding the regular demonic glow in his eyes increased to levels of wind and lightning.

“Don’t worry about it,” Satan said, with a casualness that belied his earlier edge. “We study together at school every day. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Quite calmly he turned away. “Oh, and I heard that Lucifer ordered a breakfast basket full of those Imp Queen’s Croissants you liked so much. I’ll make sure to save you one since Beel loves those, too.”

Tiredness forgotten momentarily, M.C stared at her bedroom as Satan walked away, feeling stupider than ever, but also vaguely hysterical over the thought of getting a fucking _pastry_ out of a deal with a devil.

* * *

_**A/N II: reference for stairs curse as follows:** _


End file.
